Whats the best way to backup gentoox? ** Native Install **

[scoobydu]

Would like to backup the system.

Is it as simple as copying the drive with gentoox on?

Any help would be appreciated

cheers

scooby

[ShALLaX]

To backup your Gentoox installation, you just need to save a copy of the "rootfs", "initrd", "vmlinuz" and "linuxboot.cfg" files. If anything goes wrong with your installation, just delete these files, then reupload your saved copies!

[scoobydu]

Sounds good, thanks!

[Scocou]

If you're concerned with storage space, it might be a good idea to rm the contents of /usr/portage/distfiles beforehand. If you plan on later compressing the rootfs you will get a tighter archive, as these files (mostly) have already been compressed (and are easily replaced).

Code: Select all

rm /usr/portage/distfiles/*

to delete the archives and

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emerge world -ef

to get them all back, but don't do that, it's hard on the mirrors! They will just be downloaded as needed.

[scoobydu]

edit: How's it done for a native f drive install?

TIA

[nobspangle]

you need to create a tar of your filesystem you can't copy proc so you'll have to recreate that directory again if you restore from the backup.
Use
tar -jcvf /path/to/tar/file.tar.bz2 /boot /bin /etc (and so on for each folder in your root missing out /proc)

[scoobydu]

So its a pretty manual process then.

Thanks anyway.

[nobspangle]

you could write a script, one for backup and one for restore it would only be around 10-15 lines

[scoobydu]

You're assuming the box will boot though, and it may not.

[nobspangle]

you boot off of the stardust CD keep the script on your C or E drive and run it from there

[scoobydu]

you boot off of the stardust CD

... and at what point do you exit the stardust boot process so that you have access to the mounted native f: drive linux file structures?

[nobspangle]

you just ctrl+c out of the stardust install script then mount the partitions yourself, I think the mount points are already there you just need to mount the partition. You can then execute your script which mounts all the other partitions for you