backup

[NoOp]

On 07/06/2009 08:01 PM, Daryl Styrk wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 06, 2009 at 07:22:22PM -0700, NoOp wrote:
>> 
>> I have to admit that after several years of reading these posts my eyes
>> glaze over when someone posts your advise. I suspect John (and other
>> Ubuntu users) will as well. This is not intended to offend you, but John
>> stated "I know very ltitlle about backups except cpoying files to a
>> cd/dvd". While your suggestions may be excellent for an experienced
>> linux/unix user, it probably does little to help John out.
>> 
>> So, please provide/point to simple instructions/tutorials if you can.
>> 
> 
> I did.  The manual pages.  As in the document that tells you how to
> use something.  I also included some examples of my own.  Surely you don't
> expect me/us to re-write/cliff-note the manuals.  Along with the manual pages,
> google, and the examples provided, I suggest you go and try some of them
> and come back here with the problems you run into along the way.  

Thanks, but I'm not expecting cliff-notes. But perhaps in John's case a
'cliff-note's' reply might be appropriate. I'm also pretty well versed
in man pages and google. Shall we start here?

http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/jaunty/en/man1/dd.1posix.html
or here:
http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/jaunty/en/man1/rsync.1.html

or try to figure that out via a limited gnome-terminal?

My point being is that the man pages for both/any can be quite confusing
to someone new to linux (and even to someone that has been using linux
for a few years). You also assume that John is familiar with cli and the
terminal, he is not.

> 
> Do this.  Make two new dirs..
>  
> $ mkdir source ; mkdir dest
> $ cd source
> $ touch file1 file2 file3 file4; ls
> $ mkdir included; cd included
> $ touch filea fileb filec filed; ls
> $ cd; ls
> 
> 
> Now you have 2 directories that contain 4 files each.  Back them up to the
> directory dest/

Why not just use an existing folder. But OK.

> 
> rsync -avh source/ dest/source/

Wait, what happened to dd and backing up the entire system?

John wanted " How would I backup ubuntu and other linuxs to such a drive?".

Note: IMO if rsync is involved, It's easier to just use grsync (gui) for
such a user/request.

But that's OK, let's continue with the terminal commands. For rsync you
created a folder to copy the files from 'source' to (that is what you
are doing with rsync in this case): 'dest'.

> 
> sending incremental file list
> created directory dest/source
> ./
> file1
> file2
> file3
> file4
> included/
> included/filea
> included/fileb
> included/filec
> included/filed
> 
> sent 467 bytes  received 171 bytes  1.28K bytes/sec
> total size is 0  speedup is 0.00
> 
> 
> Go look in dest/  It's all there.. Play around with them some more while
> looking over the examples you find in the man pages and on the web.
> google.com/linux is a great place to start.

So now we've managed to basically use rsync to copy files between two
folders on the same hard drive; from 'source' to 'dest'. Such actions
can be accomplished easier via Nautilus using drag & drop, and could be
expanded to the new USB hard drive as well.

Sorry, but IMO your example provides no useful information on how to
actually perform a full system backup to an external drive.