Backing up my system?

[peter Jarzynka]

Hello Joe,
  I dont know much about the Linux backup possibilities but if you do 
come across some way that you can daisy chain burnt cd's, I would love 
to hear about it. I would vote this as a possible subject matter for 
the next meeting. I would also like to vote "Fonts" issue for the next 
meeting too. I think this is an extremely important topic for windoz 
migration into Linux. I have been playing with the different methods 
for fonts with no luck. Does anyone know if the xfs and xfstt daemons 
can run simultaneously? Peter

---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: "Joe Pollock" <josephj at adelphia.net>
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 10:55:27 -0400

>Hi.  Before I get into all the gruesome details, my basic question 
is: >How do I backup my system using linux so I can restore it 
*completely* >in a simple manner without going through reinstalling 
everything (my >Windoz system takes about 4 days by the time I get all 
the applications >and patches etc. back where they were)?
>
>I have a dual boot system with Windoz on the C and D drives (hda1, 
hda5) >and Red Hat 7.0 on 3 remaining partitions.  The last and 
largest >partition is /image.  It is currently empty and should have 
plenty of >room (around 11 gb) for compressed backups of everything 
else.
>
>I am about to install Mandrake 8.0, but first, I want to backup all 
of >Red Hat (excluding the image partition itself and /mnt) to /image 
so I >can restore it if I need anything or if I don't like Mandrake, 
etc.
>
>I read the tar man and info pages and tried the following:
>
>#bash
>#backuprh - backup RedHat 7.0 to image partition
>tar -c -P --preserve --same-owner -S --totals -w -z --file=/image/rh7 
>--exclude=/image -V rh7 /
>
>I realize that I need to add something like --exclude=/mnt, but the 
>main problem was that when I ran this it was asking for confirmation 
on >every file (which would take a few years to complete).  Can I just 
>remove the -w option?  I was hoping it would only ask for 
confirmation >for an overwrite or other problem - not for everything.
>
>The bottom line is - How do I make an easily restorable backup of Red 
>Hat to my /image drive and what do I have to watch for or do when I 
>install Mandrake so that Windoz and the /image partition are left 
>intact?  Also, once Mandrake is installed, are there any issues 
related >to accessing the /image partition if I want to extract 
something from >the archive?
>
>As a side issue, the tar documentation refers to a backup script that 
>should do a lot of this for me, but it didn't really tell me how it 
>works.  Also, it said that the restore script (kind of useful) didn't 
>exist.  What's the story on this?
>
>I am big on backups, having been burnt numerous times.  I am in the 
>process of installing a cd-rw drive.  One of the main reasons for 
>getting it was so I could back up linux and Windoz and restore them 
if I >have to.  It seems like a good idea to backup Windoz partitions 
from >linux as some sort of image backup because when linux is 
running, Windoz >isn't, so no files are locked etc.
>
>What about various backup utilities like bru and amanda?  What's the 
>easiest way to deal with this and keep it all straight so that when 
>something breaks and panic starts to set in, there's a simple 
procedure >to follow to get back to a known state without having to 
figure >everything out again and worrying that you might leave out 
some >important data or patches.
>
>