How to recover using a full backup?
Volker Wysk
post at volker-wysk.de
Sun Sep 2 22:31:00 UTC 2018
Hi!
I'm making full backups of my system, on an external hard disc. It's a
combination of incremental and differential backup (accoding to the definitions
on wikipedia). So there isn't included everything in each backup, but only the
difference to the last time (or one of the last times, to be correct). This
works well.
The backup contains almost everything, excluding only things like /tmp,
/home/.../tmp, /dev, /proc and a few others.
I've needed to resort to parts of the backup in various occasions, but I never
needed to restore the full system. Now, imagine something really bad is
happening. Such as the hard disc needs to be replaced, because it is defect.
Or a failure of some large upgrade or do-release-upgrade operation, leaving the
system in an broken state beyond repair. Such that a full restoration becomes
necessary. This also applies to the (not so bad) case when one just wants to
switch to a bigger disk.
Then, I would need to boot from a different drive, such as an USB stick, make a
new file system on the (new or old) disc and restore the full backup in there.
I wonder how this is done. Just unpacking the backup doesn't do it. According
to what I know, there should some "update-initramfs -u" and "grub-install"
commands be necessary. But first some "mount --bind" commands are necessary,
such that the configuration files are in the right places. And I don't know if
there is more needing to be considered.
So, how is this done?
Thanks,
Volker
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