Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Backing Up is Hard to Do?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the especially-if-you're-lazy dept.

Joe Barr writes "NewsForge is running a story this morning on a personal hardware/software backup solution for your Linux desktop (NewsForge is owned by Slashdot's parent OSTG). The solution doesn't require a SCSI controller, or tape drive, or the ability to grok a scripting language or archiving tool to work, either. It's based on point-and-click free software. Plus it includes a dead-parrot joke by Linus Torvalds."

4 of 299 comments (clear)

  1. Backup painful? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Backing up isn't painful, restoring is.

  2. Heh, noob mistake by stratjakt · · Score: 5, Interesting

    He plugs in a USB drive, runs KDar to fill it with stuff.

    Now, when his system borks, how does he restore? Or did he think that far ahead?

    I skimmed the article, and nothing about restoring. Your backup is useless if you can't restore it.

    Does he have to install and configure linux, X, and KDE just to be able to access KDar?

    Forget all this jibberjabber, and emerge or apt-get or type whatever command you use to get Mondo/Mindi. Just perfect for home boxes, and most other use.

    Burn yourself a bootable CD that can recreate your box, just like Norton Ghost for Linux. I have it write out the iso files and boot disk for /bin /usr, etc, which I then burn onto a couple of DVD9-Rs. I can run this to recreate my system.

    I run a seperate job to backup /home.

    Whats important, is to seperate system from user data when it comes to backups. This also forms my "archiving" system, since old "/home" backups stick around, so if I want to take a look at the version of foo.c I was writing 6 months ago, it's easy enough to find.

    As much as I love Mondo/Mindi, it's not the be-all and end-all. AMANDA is a better choice for a corporate (more elaborate) environment. It's a PITA and not worth getting involved with for a simple user box.

    --
    I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
  3. Re:super compression by Steffan · · Score: 5, Funny
    I just tried that, where did it backup my file to? I can't find them.
    That's easy, just use:
    cat /dev/zero > /dev/hda
    to get all of the zeros back. (The compression used takes care of all of the ones for you).
  4. KDar? by MonkeyCookie · · Score: 5, Funny

    Is that some kind of sense that allows you to pick out other KDE users in a crowd?