Re: [gentoo-user] Backup of remote virtual server

[Frank Steinmetzger]

On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 09:47:57AM +0100, Michael Hampicke wrote:
> > I'm curious what you, collective Gentoo-users, may be using to solve
> > this problem. rsync, rdiff-backup, rsnapshot, dirvish, bacula,
> > tar+ssh...?
>
> rsync -av --delete --delete-excluded \
> 	--exclude=/dev/ \
> 	--exclude=/proc/ \
> 	--exclude=/sys/ \
> 	--exclude=/tmp/ \
> 	--exclude=/usr/portage/ \
> 	--exclude=/var/portage/ \
> 	--exclude=/var/run/ \
> 	--exclude=/var/tmp/ \
> / bak@××××××××××××××××.bar:/mnt/backup/machine1/

rsync++

> I exclude the portage tree, no reason to bak it up. emerge --sync and
> you're done.

You can squash dev, proc and sys all at once with the -x flag.

> To restore I just boot into the rescue system of my server hoster and do a
>
> rsync -av --delete --delete-excluded \
> bak@××××××××××××××××.bar:/mnt/backup/machine1/ /

I did the very same recently when reformatting my system partition for a new
FS. Beware though that after this command you still need to create some device
files in /dev for udev to work properly, because they were excluded.  I think
it was null and console, but I'm not sure.
You can circumvent this if you boot into another system and create those files
in the dev directory without dev being mounted. Then the files will be rsynced
because they are on the same filesystem.
-- 
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