[TriLUG] Linux Backup and Restore to totally wiped partition

Joseph S. Tate dragonstrider at gmail.com
Tue Feb 26 12:26:02 EST 2013


Two things come to mind, neither is fully explored and only marginally
baked.  The DD or ghost type method described by others is probably
simpler, and less error prone, but these would be faster if you could get
them to work.

Use FUSE to mount a UnionFS filesystem in copy-on-write mode as an overlay
on top of a read only root file system.  All writes go to the CoW
partition.  When done training, reinitialize that CoW partition to get back
to pristine.  To update, mount without FUSE in RW mode, update, then
restart back into UnionFS CoW mode.

Set up an LVM snapshot at the beginning of your training sessions.  When
done, delete the snapshot without syncing it back.

I imagine that RedHat just creates a custom Kickstart and TFTP to netboot
and install all their training equipment.



On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 3:33 PM, Tarus Balog <tarus at opennms.org> wrote:

> Gang:
>
> Having moved off of Apple products about 18 months ago, one thing I miss
> is Time Machine. Time Machine let's me boot using the O/S install disk,
> select "Restore from Backup" and two hours later I'm back to where I
> started.
>
> I use the built-in Ubuntu backup solution for my personal information,
> but I would like to use something else for my training room machines.
> I'd like to be able to install a clean build, back it up, then after
> class restore it to the exact state it was when the backup was taken.
>
> Any suggetions?
>
> -T
> --
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-- 
Joseph Tate



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