On 21.06.2009 14:54, Rafa? Radecki wrote:> Hi all. I currently have a problem. I try to make a backup of a running /
> filesystem to a second disc. I've read tha some people use rsync for
it. I
> mount the second harddisc at /mnt/hdb1 and issue a command:
>
> rsync -vaHx --progress --numeric-ids --delete \
> --exclude-from=asylum_backup.excludes --delete-excluded \
> / /mnt/hdb1
That's more or less exactly what i do when i migrate my boot/root-disc.
Altough i don't exclude anything when i migrate my root-filesystem.
Biggest difference is that i mount the root-filesystem to another
mount-point, so that that instance doesn't have mounts mounted which can
hide things.
> Then I shutdown the system, remove the first disc and try to boot the
> system with a rescue cd to install grub through grub-install.
Which isn't really necessary. A 'device.map' is all it takes to
convince
GRUB to see the hard-disc world you like it to see. ;-)
> I chroot to the second disc (the filesystem which I copied earlier through
> rsync) and try to use grub-install but someting isn't ok with /proc,
/sys,
> .etc. They are empty.
/proc & /sys are mount-points with virtual-kernel-filesystems.
They are mounted on the root-filesystem provided of the rescue-system
and are not mounted (automatically) on your root-filesystem.
I never needed them to mounted just for installing grub, but if you need them:
mount --bind /proc <mountpoint>/proc
mount --bind /sys <mountpoint>/sys
And if you use udev and your <mountpoint>/dev isn't fully populated:
mount --bind /dev <mountpoint>/dev
You do that before chroot.
> I thought that rsync copied the whole / filesystem but was that really?
What
rsync can't mount filesystems, that is out of it's scope.
The other thing that is out of rsync-scope is "/etc/fstab", which you
MAY have to fix (on the copy).
And you also MAY have to fix the GRUB-menu.
But you only should have to do that if the partitions differ and/or if
the new HDD would have another device. (hda vs. hdb, hda vs. sda)
> do you think about backuping running / filesystems with rsync? Could it be
> an appropriate tool in that context or not? I want to make a copy which in
> case of the first disks' failure could be used quite fast (for example
only
> with gub-install to repair MBR).
As i said, i have used rsync to migrate my filesystems several times
over the years.
Bis denn
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