From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Oct 15 03:42:48 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F4148106566B for ; Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:42:47 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from nlandys@gmail.com) Received: from mail-qy0-f203.google.com (mail-qy0-f203.google.com [209.85.221.203]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B26B18FC26 for ; Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:42:47 +0000 (UTC) Received: by qyk42 with SMTP id 42so384055qyk.28 for ; Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:42:47 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:mime-version:received:date:message-id:subject :from:to:content-type; bh=uFtXwYMQwFbpT/mq05FTfKB8/0ncQSVSDgIk9FHOR38=; b=dwy62ikXvPgXsTUHfYa8nyQx3oVB18PktRMrjeWFjcKk0cYaVsg1ojQNiR8eWVeP1g ryina0Ir8ShRMgFWqpBJxVJ/60tUzHnVnlrPlel75W7hvaP/nLnCvnH3SgLfoLpiqI6L H7jfbduy/D7Tchw497SyntpKV4rsIjYYZGcZc= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:date:message-id:subject:from:to:content-type; b=oV1hjVhtMRsClSd4qJo+z3Zw0L3bBU/oOisDeBFrQd2W5U2pvOfijJdRbc3ByAbUDk JFLgfBPz4IsCKSOutQ32VrcgYk2Un38KA4iuSZpLWXQXhvmBjZycAtCDxxQGbMX3dDVf GhgJzRm6Q2LxdCSzeBuf+yv20JcnO46w+Kmcw= MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.229.10.13 with SMTP id n13mr3765428qcn.103.1255578167212; Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:42:47 -0700 (PDT) Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:42:47 -0700 Message-ID: <560f92640910142042tc46f1e3lb81ac1e4528a44ab@mail.gmail.com> From: Nerius Landys To: questions@freebsd.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Cc: Subject: Best procedure for full backup of live system X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:42:48 -0000 My server is increasingly having important work stored on it, and I need to start taking backups of a lot of directories, especially /home, /opt, /etc, /usr/local/etc, and maybe others. The ideal backup (and what I've done in the past) is to take a full low-level dd image of the disk while the system is down (this is easy to do in a situation where you have dual boot). Or, since the output of dd would take up tons of space and would only be usable on an identical hard drive, use "dump" to take the backup while the machine is turned off (again easy to do on a dual boot). But now, I cannot bring down the machine. My plan is to do a tar gzip of / on the fly, and pipe that to ssh (remote machine). However, the system is live, and files will be in the progress of changing. My question is, what is the recommended procedure of taking a full backup on a live system? Ideally, if my hard drive were to crash, I would like to have such a backup so as to make it possible to copy over the entire backup to a new identical harddrive without doing any reinstall or configuration. Should I use tar/gzip? dump? What exact command should I use? I guess I'll back up all of / including system files, because there is not too much data. I will be piping the output to ssh.