rsync seems to work fine copying from the running system. Files match as far as a random check. I've been hoping to simplify life by rsyncing from the running system to have a bootable backup. Most conversations on the list suggest this is easy, and I've gotten it to happen, and now I've forgotten to do some detail.... ( /etc/fstab is corrected to refer to the device name of the drive that is booted by grub) here is my output and rsync script: from dmesg: ================================================everything was fine until autodetecting RAID arrays autorun ... ... autorun DONE. NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0 IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP, IGMP IP: routing cache hash table of 1024 buckets, 8Kbytes TCP: Hash tables configured (established 8192 bind 8192) NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0. ds: no socket drivers loaded! VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly. Freeing unused kernel memory: 236k freed Warning: unable to open an initial console hub.c: USB new device connect on bus2/2, assigned device number 2 hub.c: USB hub found hub.c: 4 ports detected script that runs rsync to a partition or disk mounted on /safety ===============================================#!/bin/sh if [ -d "/safety/proc" ] then echo " " else mkdir /safety/proc fi /opk/bin/rsync -acHv --delete \ --exclude "/download" \ --exclude "/proc/" \ --exclude "/var/spool/cups/" \ --exclude "/seconddisk" \ --exclude "/safety" \ --exclude "/safety2" \ --exclude "/etc/fstab" \ --exclude "/etc/mtab" \ / /safety if [ -f "/etc/fstab" ] then echo " " else echo "No /etc/fstab" cp /etc/fstab /safety/etc fi if [ -f "/etc/mtab" ] then echo " " else echo "No /etc/mtab" cp /etc/mtab /safety/etc fi ========================================