> -----Original Message----- > From: centos-bounces at centos.org > [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On Behalf Of Todd Cary > Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2007 8:00 PM > To: CentOS mailing list > Subject: [CentOS] The equivalent of Ghosting the system > > If I were to lose my main hard drive, I would like to have the > opportunity to do the same as I can do using Windows: restore from my > USB and have a working system. > > If I were to rsync everything on the main drive (excluding the backup > drive, of course and a few other directories) to my USB > drive, could I > restore using some CD based version of Linux e.g. Knoppix? Good old tar works well here. If you have a big enough USB drive, but you can tar up different parts of the tree onto different memory sticks. Just boot into a recovery CD. Re-setup your partitions, mirrors etc. Format them. Un-tar into them. Run grub/lilo whatever to install the bootloader. Reboot, and voila! To reduce time and size of backup/restore you can use rpm with the audit flag to find all files that have changed from the original rpm, tar only those. Save a list of RPMs installed, make a kickstart floppy of the list. Tar up user files. Re-install OS, using kickstart floppy. Un-tar the config files, un-tar the user files and away you go. -Ross ______________________________________________________________________ This e-mail, and any attachments thereto, is intended only for use by the addressee(s) named herein and may contain legally privileged and/or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail, and any attachments thereto, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please immediately notify the sender and permanently delete the original and any copy or printout thereof.