I would definitely be interested in the web page ! Something else I use Disk Image. It creates a complete image of your HD saving all partitions to a file on another hard drive. This file can be restored later and presto, you have a complete system the way you left it :) This was intended for commercial outfits like Dell. They configure a system once and then duplicate the HD.
If you do, any disk will work as a secondary disk and the whole program fits on one floppy ! You still need a boot floppy. I burned a CDROM and have a boot floppy that will boot almost any system (in DOS) and give a menu of most all the available CDROM drivers. I then put CDROM in and restore the saved image. This is probably not practical for routine backups. paul -----Original Message----- From: John Miskinis [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 1999 6:03 AM To: debian-user@lists.debian.org Subject: Re: Does anyone use ZIP disks to backup/restore their system? How? Hi, Thanks for the replies, it's really nice to know how others deal with the "backup" issue(s). I'm really hoping to implement a backup strategy that will allow me to backup/restore my entire linux system. Over the last 10 hours or so, I have been researching "taper" as a means. I checked out a couple others, but one needed libc5 libraries, and I wasn't sure if the other would work with multiple volumes. Taper seems to be quite slick. I did a full backup, which only spanned 2 volumes, instead of 3 with kbackup. Unfortunately I can't seem to fit "taper" on my rescue disk. It has library dependencies (curses? forms?) but allows static building. But the static binaries become QUITE large. I tried pruning down my rescue system as small as possible, but I think I need to start from scratch again. I use "zdisk" which is also quite slick. It copies a specified kernel (mine!) and an MSDOS filed filesystem (compressed). The MSDOS file system actually includes an ext2 filed filesystem (compressed) and syslinux. It was a little trickly to figure it out, but I did, and am impressed. BUT, I think my MSDOS filed filesystem is not compressing as small as it should, because I have changed it REPEATEDLY. I remember seeing some notes somewhere about this (bootkit?) and why the /dev/zero is used as the input file when creating a file to be used as a loop device. I think it may actually be possible to use zdisk to create a 1 floppy boot/root disk, that will allow a taper restore to happen. My brain is a little fried after the last 10 hours or so on this project, but I will be persuing this again in the near future. I may have to resort to having the "taper" and "bg_restore" binaries on a seperate floppy. If I ever get this working, I would be interested to know if people would benefit from a web page on all of this stuff. I planned to have a linux on IBM Thinkpad 560 up at some point anyway, as it's very tricky to get linux on this machine with no network connectivity and no builtin CD! John >From: "E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >To: debian <debian-user@lists.debian.org> >Subject: Re: Does anyone use ZIP disks to backup/restore their system? How? >Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 09:37:07 +0100 > >On Tue, Nov 02, 1999 at 06:29:45PM -0800, John Miskinis wrote: > > Hi, > >[...] > > > This leads me to ask if most people just backup their important > > files on linux, and if they lose their system, they reinstall from > > scratch, then restore just their important (user modified) files? > >Not even that. I only safeguard my own products (TeX files, fractals, >programs). The rest I have on CD, and the second time I install >something I usually configure things faster. Sometimes it is nice to >try some new settings. > > > This is how I always worked on Windows 95. If I had a builtin > > CDROM, and linux was easier to install I might opt for this, but > > on my Thinkpad 560, it took me 4-5 hours to get everything back. > >It probably would take me the same amount of time. But then again, it >doesn't happen a lot. > >Eric > >-- > E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) > Eindhoven Univ. of Technology > Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA) > > >-- >Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] < >/dev/null > > ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] < /dev/null
