Date: Sat, 17 Oct 2009 03:35:37 -0700 From: Michael David Crawford <mdc@prgmr.com> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Best procedure for full backup of live system Message-ID: <4AD99DF9.5010106@prgmr.com> In-Reply-To: <560f92640910151742h33393131j9974c23db37602b8@mail.gmail.com> References: <560f92640910142042tc46f1e3lb81ac1e4528a44ab@mail.gmail.com> <20091015143947.GB54613@gizmo.acns.msu.edu> <560f92640910151742h33393131j9974c23db37602b8@mail.gmail.com>
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Nerius Landys wrote:
> > dd if=/dev/ad4 of=MBR_backup bs=512 count=1
>
> to back up the MBR, so I can recontruct the boot program and partition
> table. But they don't mention that in the Handbook.
While that will back up the Master Boot Record, it's not sufficient for
the general case of MS-DOS style partitions. It will only include the
primary and extended partitions.
The logical partitions, which exist inside an extended partition, are a
linked list whose elements are distributed across your disk somewhere.
If you have any extended partitions, you need to back them up too. They
aren't part of the 512-byte MBR so just using dd to grab the first 512
bytes won't do.
The Linux sfdisk program can create a machine readible text file that
includes any logical partitions. Does FreeBSD also have sfdisk?
Perhaps it's in ports. I don't have my FreeBSD box handy right now so I
can't just look.
... and as has been pointed out, you'll also want your BSD disklabel
which is a whole different beast.
Mike
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Michael David Crawford
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