My PegII has the following partition layout:

FFS boot partition
SFS MorphOS root partition
OSX partition for MacOnLinux
ReiserFS Ubuntu root partition
Ubuntu swap partition
SFS MorphOS data partition

I'm wondering about the best way to back this system up? I'd hate to lose everything should the disk die, but backing up each individual OS seems like a headache. Is there an easy way? Maybe something like Symantec Ghost which will support all of the filesystems I'm using (or ignore them and back up the raw data).

Cheers
moto

You could try booting into a Linux Live CD of some sort, and dd'ing /dev/hda (or whatever your disk is called) to a file on a remote partiton mounted over NFS or samba. Just remember not to have any of the disks filesystems mounted when doing this.

Thanks. What would I do with it once I had mounted it?

Usually it should work to simply cat your chosen partition into a file:
cat /dev/hdXX >> /path/to/a/partition/with/lots/of/free/space/partition.img
where XX stands for your desired partition.
I've never cat ed a partition, so i only tell what i think that is right...(?)
An other possibility would be to use some hdimager, like
http://sourceforge.net/projects/hdimage
No idea which filesystems it likes, but I guess it uses all filesystems which are supported by the running kernel.

Thanks Frostwork. Just re-read Kidde's message and understand it better now. I guess something like "dd if=/dev/hda of=/backup/location/backup.img" would work? Is this the same as "cat /dev/hda >/backup/location/backup.img"?

Cheers
moto

oh, haven't seen kidde's "dd", too...
I think dd is the better choice

Yep, using dd from what I've see is a much better choice. I've seen that used numerous times for backing up raw data off a disk, but I've never seen cat used (although I may not be looking in the right places).

I think using either dd or even tar would work will. I've had most experience with using tar, but then again you would have to mount each filesystem and the backup would be file-based rather than raw data-based (as dd is). I don't know how you feel about commercial products (and I'm not sure if ReiserFS is supported with this), but I've been messing with Acronis lately and it seems to be a good choice for doing a full-disk backup if you don't mind spending the money. A trial version is available if you would like to test it out:
http://www.acronis.com/

Now I'm not familiar with FSF and SFS, and neither may Acronis. dd really may be your best bet:
http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/saw2 ... tions.html

No matter what you use, I would highly recommend not trying to perform the backup with any of the filesystems being used. In other words, boot from some type of boot CD. Sometimes you can get away with that, but if you want to make sure that every file in your backup is good then make sure to use another boot device.

_________________
Joshua Purcell

Thanks all. Looks like dd is the best option. Of course I will use it from a boot CD without any of the filesystems mounted. Can I pipe the file through gzip to compress it on the fly? And I assume if I use dd to copy it back the other way (from the file back on to the disk) then everything will be back the way it was including the partition table? Or is there anything "hidden" that dd will not be able to copy?

Thanks again

moto

As far as I'm aware, dd gets everything... exactly what is on the disk. Other things (like tar for instance) get the files, but don't care about how it's laid out on the disk. In fact you can use tar to free up space (defragment) by taking a backup using that tool, deleting everything, then restoring the backup. Whatever is on the disk will be copied over with dd.

_________________
Joshua Purcell

Yep, then maybe really giving
http://sourceforge.net/projects/hdimage
a try would make sense, as it excludes unused size...
good luck

I hadn't considered that dd would copy the empty parts of the disk too. Though I guess gz would compress those down to nothing anyway if I can pipe dd in to gz? I can't find any info in the hdimage archive to show which filesystems it supports. I doubt it will support FFS, SFS, HFS, Reiser and Linux Swap

I think I have found the solution:

#gzip -9c < /dev/hda > image.gz
to backup

# gzip -cd < image.gz > /dev/hda
to restore

I haven't tested this so I don't know if it works. I just found it in a Linux newsgroup and adapted it slightly. Any thoughts?

Sorry about all the "almost" answers, but i'm 99% sure that using any tool similar to tar or gzip will only get things at the file level (not including stuff such as filesystem info, MBR, blank space, etc.). When you are dealing with many different types of filesystems and several partitions, some tool that doesn't care about filesystems may be the easiest way.

I didn't hear you say you had a failing system, only that you would like to get a backup. You could always try different routes and post which one worked best for your situation? I'm a little interested in whether or not some file-based backup solution would work for your case.

_________________
Joshua Purcell

There is also a nice linux program called PARTIMAGE that will do nice backups that can be restored. But dont know if it supports FFS/SFS.. read the man pages

magnetic

Are you sure? I would agree if I was using something like

# gzip -9c < /folder/* > image.gz

as this would be telling gzip to compress all of the files in /folder. But if I feed the block device /dev/hda to gzip, won't it just compress the whole thing?