Using YaST System Backup


As always, YaST is here to help simplify the backup task. It will not back up your entire drive, but it can get all the critical files you need to boot your system if your system fails. You can use this tool to create several backup profiles, depending on your strategy.

The System Backup and Restore System tools are both located in the YaST System page. You'll learn more about the Restore tool later in the chapter.

The first time you start System Backup, you will get a blank page. You must first create a backup profile. Go to Profile Management and click Add to create a new profile, as shown in Figure 20.1.

Figure 20.1. Click Add from the Profile Management menu to create a new profile.


In this section, you learn how to make an initial backup to the home directory for later burning to CD. The first Add Profile screen, Archive Settings, explains a little about the process and asks you where you want to store your backup. Type the full path and name the file in the File Name line, as shown in Figure 20.2.

Figure 20.2. Define the location for your backup file and choose the type of archive you want to use in this screen.


If you have the Network File System (NFS) running and can back up to a remote volume, click the Network button and select the NFS Server name and your directory in the appropriate boxes.

By default, YaST compresses your system files with the GNUZip (gz) tool and places all the compressed files into a Tape ARchive (TAR). You can also choose to compress with the newer bzip (bz2) archive format, or leave the files uncompressed in another TAR wrapper. If you are using Access Control Lists (ACL), YaST advises using the star format for the subarchives. There's no harm in selecting the defaults, but bzip gets slightly better compression rates than GNUZip.

Click Next to continue.

In the File Selection screen (see Figure 20.3), you are defining files that won't be backed up. By default (and there isn't really any way to change this), YaST backs up every file from packages that have changed since installation. Checking the Backup Files Not Belonging to Any Package box backs up everything, including data files. The Check MD5 Sum Instead of Time or Size option uses the MD5 hash algorithm to determine whether a file has changed. MD5 transforms a data string of any length into a shorter, fixed-length value. No two strings of data will produce the same hash value. If you don't check this box, YaST will use the last modified date or a changed size to determine whether a file has changed. The latter backup will be faster, but perhaps not as accurate.

Figure 20.3. The File Selection screen defines files that will not be backed up, rather than files that are backed up.


Tip

You can (and perhaps should) have separate backup profiles for packages, data (files not belonging to any package, with your ~/Mail directory excluded), and mail (with ~/Mail included). See the Search Constraints screen to learn how to take directories out of the backup.


If you want to see a list of the files to be backed up before YaST completes the backup, check the Display List of Files Before Creating Archive box. To add a description of this particular backup profile, type in the appropriate box.

If you have a dual-boot system, and the boot manager sits on your hard drive, it is a good idea to back up your partition table. This is not done by default. Click Expert at the bottom of this screen, and then check Back Up Hard Disk System Areas. Clicking Options shows that Back Up Partition Tables is checked automatically when you choose to back up the system areas. If you have an ext2 file system (instead of the default ReiserFS), you can use the Options to back up critical areas of the file system as well.

By default, YaST stores the backup archive while it's being built in the /tmp directory. You can change this in the Expert options, but you should need to do this only if that directory is exceedingly low on space.

When you've finished setting the Expert options, click OK to return to the File Selection screen. When you've made all your selections, click Next to continue. The Search Constraints screen (see Figure 20.4) appears.

Figure 20.4. By default, YaST excludes any Windows volumes, remote directories, the /var directories that store transient information, and other mount points that should not be backed up. You can edit this list and add files matching regular expressions.


The final screen in the Backup Wizard lists directories and file systems to be ignored in the backup process. By default, directories that store transient system information and "alien" file systems such as CDs and floppies that happen to be sitting in their respective drives, Windows volumes, and remote directories are not backed up by default. You can add or delete any directory or file system to or from this exclusion list. You can also exclude files matching a defined regular expression.

Click OK to complete the backup profile. You will return to the main System Backup screen. Click Start Backup to begin the process.



SUSE Linux 10 Unleashed
SUSE Linux 10.0 Unleashed
ISBN: 0672327260
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 332

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