Howto: Easy Full System Backup and Restore

There's a great little backup utility that's available only in Fedora (afaik) called FWBackups. We're gonna be installing that and learning how to use it to backup and recover our Aspire Ones

Note: if you're having trouble with fwbackups running the backup properly, please post your exact settings or attach your backup profile (see below on exporting) - it's your best chance of getting some help.

Getting FWBackups

You can use your Add/Remove programs menu item to search for and install "fwbackups".

OR run this

Code:

sudo yum install fwbackups

Getting FWBackups

To do a full system backup, we need to run fwbackups as an administrator. You can just launch

Code:

sudo fwbackups

from a terminal. Or you can modify the launcher file to always run it as an administrator:

Code:

sudo mousepad /usr/share/applications/fedora-fwbackups.desktop

Change the Exec line to

Then you can add it to your desktop launchers (shown here how to add to Files):

Code:

mousepad .config/xfce4/desktop/group-app.xml

Look for

Code:

 <app is_arrow="1" name="" sequence="-1-10">/usr/share/applications/green-back.desktop</app>
	 <app sequence="1">/usr/share/applications/Document.desktop</app>
	 <app sequence="3">/usr/share/applications/Picture.desktop</app>
	 <app sequence="2">/usr/share/applications/Music.desktop</app>
	 <app sequence="0">/usr/share/applications/Video.desktop</app>
	 <app sequence="5">/usr/share/applications/Download.desktop</app>
         <app sequence="4">/usr/share/applications/Thunar.desktop</app>

Add this line directly below:

<app sequence="6">/usr/share/applications/fedora-fwbackups.desktop</app>

Full system backup

The cool thing about unix based operating systems like fedora and linpus is that everything, even the important data, is all just a bunch of files that can be copied. The tricky part is different files have different permissions - some belong to your user, some belong to the administrator. Which is why we're running the backup as "sudo".

Ok once you've got the app running, click "Backup Sets". This allows us to create a profile we can re-use everytime we make a backup.

Click "New Set", name it anything you like, something like "Full System Backup" is a good choice. You will see a bunch of add buttons.

Click "Add Folders", and select the following folders:

[attachment=1:3jytg1nx]screen1.png[/attachment:3jytg1nx]

The "Destination" tab allows you to choose just that. I save my backup to an external drive, so I picked "Local Folder" and used browse to go to that directory.

"Times" allows you to configure how often the backup will run (if you always have access to the backup location), otherwise just leave it alone.

Options(Simple) - the only one we need to worry about. Here are my settings:

[attachment=0:3jytg1nx]Screenshot-Configure Set.png[/attachment:3jytg1nx]

These settings keep an exact replica of all your files on your backup medium using "rsync" (only one most recent backup). There are NOT compressed in any way (which is MUCH faster on such a tiny processor) and this allows for faster and easier recovery. Play around with the other options.

OK apply, and press "Backup Set now" whenever you want to make a backup.

You may want to keep a copy of your backup configuration (File->export set), just in case. It's a small text file. I keep mine in an email

Restoring

Case 1

Say you've run a liveupdate, you don't like that it broke something, you can still bootup and get to the desktop and want to go back to what you have backed up.

Open the app, press restore, pick which backup (make sure the backup drive is plugged in or that you're olnine in case of network backups) - presto.

If you have backed up the directories as shown above, type "/" as your restore location, without the "".

Case 2

You changed one or several files, and want to grab them from the backup and restore them. This is assuming your backup is on a hard drive attached to the computer:

Code:

su -
cd /media/where/your/backup/is
cp -afv filename /file/you/want/to/restore

The a option ensures correct permissions, f is to force, and v is verbose so you can see what's going on.

Case 3

And the reason this howto was written:

You have completely botched the system, you've got a bios screen but that's about it or you can't boot past the cursor and black screen.

First, perform recovery from the CD (or usb key) like normal, so you get a clean system.

Then install fwbackups as described above, run it (you don't have to create the shortcut since we're restoring). Import your configuration (see, I told you to make one!) using "File->Import set", and then click "restore"

For the more familiar with command line, rsync backups (the configuration above) allow you to "cp -avf *" on a livecd to where your internal hard disk is mounted.

Have fun!

 

If this worx, like it seems, fantastic find!

SSD backup should be standard in linpussy system.

Thank you!

/m

 

Well it works well for me, i've recovered many an install already But mileage may vary

 

Yet another great tutorial from annafil

Im going to perform a backup via this method. But for my standards this is still too circuitously.
I would like to have an image file, made with a third party programm such as Acronis TrueImage or Norton Ghost. I tried it with Acronis TI, but the full version is required... And i still wasnt able to get Norton Ghost bootable onto my USB Stick...

I guess im going to do a backup with youre method, but as soon as i get my chance, im gonna create an image

 

suki22 : I can understand that, and actually, you don't need any extra software if you want to do a complete "clone".

There's a utility called "Gparted" that allows you to literally copy and paste partitions from one hard disk to another. They are uncompressed, but it's a very good way of preserving everything.

Most linux live cds have gparted (often called "Partition Manager") preinstalled. So you don't have to hunt for anything specific - if you ahve an Ubuntu CD that works great. But you must use a LIVE system, otherwise you cannot copy and paste.

There's also a quirk where gparted insists the space you copy the clone to must always be bigger than the original partitoin, even if it's by 1mb (I think it's a long running bug that hasn't been fixed yet).

Do note that if you overwrite the MBR of your aspire one with anything OTHER than linpus, you don't have a choice but to do a full recovery back to system settings, and then use your ghost image. I'm pretty familiar with restoring linux to bootable states, but I couldn't get it working using the normal methods which leads me to believe that acer made some modifications to that too. So be aware of that

I'm sure there are lots of great tools out there that do the job, I just love gparted because it's so easily available and free!!

Good luck!

 

Looks great... But I'm guessing that I need yet another USB-stick to keep te backup on? Those things aren't THAT cheap

 

Really? You can get 4 gigs for $10 now

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi ... rder=PRICE


; ) Newegg: the happy ending of internet shopping.

 

micha: I think I mentioned that the program also does network backups. you can also save the backup to the hard drive itself (just make sure it's saved to a place that doesn't get backed up, or you get a never ending loop!! ) and then you can probably put it on a cd.

 

Oh wow Okay, I stand corrected.

Annafil, I still have problems reaching the network, but that'd be a good option. I'll just have to try it out when I get back from my holiday Thanks for the effort of writing the tut!

 

annafil, it seems to me that the way I outlined in another thread here:

viewtopic.php?f=29&t=317

makes restorations much simpler than having to reinstall the Linpus OS from factory, installing fwbackups and then restoring from that backup. What I outline in that thread is a way to have an external drive available that does it all - a complete backup (including the MBR) and a complete restoration, simply on a flash key or ext usb hdd.

The steps involved do mean some commandline typing, but pretty easy to do if the instructions are followed, one step at a time.

Cheers.

 

I've seen it before, and while it's a useful option for some, i disagree about ease. Firstly, your instructions zip up the backup, which means extracting individual files to restore is much slower than using the above method.

Secondly, a reinstall is needed only in cases of severe damage to the existing system (ie case number 3 of all the install options).

Thirdly, newbies trust guis more.

And fourthly, this tool does network and incremental backups as well, making it almost a time machine replacement.

But thanks for linking to yours too, i'm sure some will find it very useful

 

Well your title for this thread is "Howto: Easy Full System Backup and Restore". Now you're arguing that one would want to restore just particular files?

My point was that it doesn't appear to be that convenient to have to first do a full restore of the original OS and then install fwbackups and then finally get things returned to a current system (essentially writing twice to the ssd to accomplish this). You seem to be missing all this, yet that is precisely what your thread tells us is the purpose of this howto.

GUI or no GUI, the process you prescribe to backup a current system and restore that system is a long and convoluted process, imho. But, each to his/her own and people can decide how they want to approach it. Just thought that I'd make others aware of a much easier approach.

Cheers.

 

Yes, it's an easy full system backup, and three varying ways of restore inluding one full system restore. I'm not sure I see what the problem is here, you have a comment about one thing buried in another post, I have a howto about something else. I have acknoweldged your method has it's uses, and you find it easier. I think mine is. Both work well for different people. How about we let them decide, shall we?

 

I'm very new to the Linux world, so I feel annafil's option has the advantage, because I like to mess with system files in GUIs (way easier) and the terminal stuff just scares me.
I don't mind writing in the terminal once in a while, but I can't stand the DOS-ish experience once again now that I have been using window interface for years. I think that's the main reason for the love that Linux has, because there are many ways to do the same things.

I find this method simple and yet I can set the machine to do a backup every now and then and the incremental option comes pretty handy because I don't want to spend much time doing a full system backup every Sunday, I just want to continue from where I stopped.

 

@ annafil
Okay, i didnt know that gparted is able to copy a partition. Maybe im going to try it
But, i dont know what it is but, i just feel better if i have a acronis or norton image on my external hdd for restoring...
I trust those apps, because i used them often in the past

 

suki22: I understand I used to be a Photoshop addict, and there are still certain things I use it for over all the free tools because I'm familiar with it... that said, gparted is a very useful tool to learn (and easy, so give it a shot too and see what happens)

 

Yep, im going to have a look at gparted.
I just did the backup with fwbackups, so i can try more tweaks now

 

How long is the backup supposed to take? I've copied all the settings from the howto but i've aborted the backup twice now (once trying on NAS and once on USB stick) when the progress bar seems to stop moving after like a hour.

Since restore from usb went pretty fast i'd expect the backup to take about the same time? (but maybe thats just me being naive :? )

 

Mine takes less than 20 minutes...

Where are you saving your backup to??

 

I tried it once storing to my NAS but since this uses wlan i suspected this to be the problem. Then i tried a 2gig USB drive but that didn't seem to help
I must say i have the A1 with the 120 gig HD, but i dont think that should be an issue, it doesn't try to backup the whole partition does it? just the folders i specified.

SOLVED : For some reason "sudo fwbackups" didn't cut it, logged in SU and then started fwbackups, created a new set > worked