Upgrading to Edgy using CD / backing up whole system

[Georg Sauthoff]

On 2007-01-12, Ben Edwards <funkytwig at gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

[..]
> Also before doing this I want to back up by whole system to an
> external USB drive.  I guess I will need to go into single user mode
> and manually mount the drive (should be able to work this out but
> pointers would be good).  I am planing on creating a directory on the
> drive (i.e. /backup) and copying /. to it.  So the copy command would
> be something like

> cp -r -f -v -p -u -x /. /media/temp/backup
[..]

btw, GNU cp has an option -a (archive) that implicated the most needed
options if want something like little changing permissions ownership
etc..

> Douse this seem correct, have I missed anything?

I want to do a backup I suggest this:
- don't boot the system you want to backup!
- boot via a Live-CD
- plug you usb-drive mount it etc
- use a tar-program! (GNU tar or star) - then you don't have to care, if
your cp does everything right (like not following links, ignoring
special files, saving attributes and permissions etc.) - tar is just
designed to do it right.

E.g. mount every partition your current systems consists of and do
something like this (as root!):
# mount /dev/hdaFOO /mnt/old_root
# cd /mnt/old_root
# tar -c -f /mnt/extern/root.tar .
(tar -z adds gzip compression)

Use tar -x -f foo.tar to extract the saved files.

Best regards
Georg Sauthoff