If I want to make a backup of my entire OS (including but not just my home directory), how do I go about this?
Is it as simple as backing up everything in / and then when if I suffer a crash, just copying the files back over?
Will this cover grub, and how do I actually do this when the system is inoperable?
FILES
Refer to this howto: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=35087
In simple terms, the backup command is:
sudo tar czf /backup.tar.gz \
--exclude=/backup.tar.gz \
--exclude=/dev \
--exclude=/mnt \
--exclude=/proc \
--exclude=/sys \
--exclude=/tmp \
--exclude=/media \
--exclude=/lost+found \
/
Add more --exclude= parameters if you need to.
It will create an archive of all your files at /backup.tar.gz, which should be copied to another computer or drive.
To restore your files when the system goes pear-shaped, use a Live CD. Mount the bad system under /media or /mnt and then run tar xf /path/to/drive/with/backup.tar.gz -C /mnt (or /media).
GRUB
This will not cover GRUB, however you can easily reinstall it by following this guide here. You only need to do steps Three and Four.
/devand /proc: https://askubuntu.com/a/720473/11015
– MestreLion
May 18 '17 at 12:03
/backup.tar.gz to whatever is your mount point, like /media/backup//backup.tar.gz
– MestreLion
May 18 '17 at 12:06
/dev, /mnt, /proc, /sys and /lost+found". Good to know. This excludes stuff like /dev/urandom, which would copy an infinite amount, or /proc/kcore, which is 128TB on my system, but includes for example /usr/bin with most programs in it.
– Fabian Röling
Apr 23 '20 at 12:44
dd? Can we not just use dd to clone the entire disk?
– simplename
Oct 28 '20 at 02:41
tar -cvpzf /backup.tar.gz --exclude=/backup.tar.gz --one-file-system / will do what you want without needing to add all those other --exclude directories
– simplename
Oct 28 '20 at 04:17
/run and /media among other things.
– Nux
Nov 02 '21 at 15:25
To clone your system to another system. Or make a backup. In terminal type:
dpkg --get-selections | grep -v deinstall > ubuntu-files
This command makes a file list of all installed packages in your system (and stores it in present working directory). Backup this file in hdd, email, etc...(this file is very small).
In the freshly installed ubuntu system run:
sudo dpkg --set-selections <./ubuntu-files (will set it up and)
apt-get -y update
apt-get dselect-upgrade
This will install only those packages you had installed (with apt-get) in the old system.
Alternatively, you could back up all the .deb packages from /var/cache/apt/archives/ and install them manually using:
dpkg -i *.deb
And after that running an update cycle later.
Noone noticed clonezilla. It makes a complete image of your hard drive, so it backups absolutely everything. It's as easy as burning an iso or creating a bootable flash drive.
The actual backup takes a while, but is the most reliable.
Here is a solution I use with SquashFS. It is quite similar to TAR.GZ solution proposed earlier, but has some major benefits.
SquashFS is a compressed file system, which is completely stored in one file. This file can be mounted to an existing system and accessed in a usual way, like any other partition. The difference to TAR.GZ is that SquashFS is a full-blown file system with random access to files, while TAR is just one big concatenated file.
This means that if you want to mount some large backup of your whole file system, for TAR.GZ it would take like 5 hours (in my experience) and for SquashFS it would take just minutes/seconds. The same is true also for the compression/backup operation, SquashFS is many times faster.
UPDATE 2017-01-31: It appears that not only can you mount squashfs file, but also open it as a usual archive with familiar apps like File Roller on Linux and 7-Zip on Windows, etc.
So here is a command I use to back up my root folder:
sudo mksquashfs / /path/to/backup/hdd/root-backup.sqsh -e home media dev run mnt proc sys tmp
where "-e" switch excludes folders you want to exclude (like virtual and external Linux folders in my example).
After the backup is done, I can now mount it:
sudo mkdir /mnt/root_backup
sudo mount /path/to/backup/hdd/root-backup.sqsh /mnt/root_backup -t squashfs -o loop
Now just wait couple minutes (depending on size of the archive) and enjoy all your files at /mnt/root_backup folder.
Same can be done for /home/myname folder, e.g.
sudo mksquashfs /home/myname /path/to/backup/hdd/home-backup.sqsh -e Dropbox GoogleDrive
I exclude Dropbox and GoogleDrive here to avoid any potential problems in the future, in case I restore those folders from backup and they become messing with the actual files in the cloud.
Check more info at http://tldp.org/HOWTO/SquashFS-HOWTO/creatingandusing.html
mksquashfs on directories that have ACLs defined results in an Unrecognised xattr prefix system.posix_acl_access error. More details here and a possible patch here.
– Jim Walker
Nov 22 '20 at 20:20
We can also do backup of system with rsync & exclude files & folders that we don't want. Here is the following command to do this :
#rsync -aAXv --exclude={"/dev/*","/proc/*","/sys/*","/tmp/*","/run/*","/mnt/*","/media/*","/lost+found"} /* /path/to/backup/folder
Using the -aAX set of options, the files are transferred in archive mode, ensuring that symbolic links, devices, permissions and ownerships, modification times, ACLs and extended attributes are preserved
The --exclude option will cause files that match the given patterns to be excluded.
REFERENCE : Full system backup with rsync
You can use Remastersys to create a bootable live CD/DVD image. This will install like a normal Ubuntu CD.
To install Remastersys, you first need to add a repository:
deb http://www.geekconnection.org/remastersys/repository karmic/
You can then install it from the Software Centre as usual.
Once installed, use it to make a 'dist' backup. This means that user data will be excluded from the ISO image.
This is often used to create custom distributions but is still useful for the backup task you have in mind. One caveat is that it may fail if the contents of / (minus user data in /home) takes up too much memory because the ISO file format can only hold ~4GB data. Remastersys uses a file system called squashfs to compress your data so you should be OK with up to ~8GB.
Try Remastersys.
With that program you can do liveCD (just the same as Ubuntu installation iso file) of your system with ability to install it on hard drive. Works pretty simple (if you know how to burn iso to USB/CD/DVD).
Works perfectly on my 11.10 and 11.04, and older ones as well.
Installation:
edit file /etc/apt/sources.list
add: # Remastersys
deb http://www.geekconnection.org/remastersys/repository karmic/ and save
Then run in terminal:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install remastersys
I turned afrish's excellent answer into a script for myself. Thought it could be useful for those wishing to automate it. The nice thing is that since the script can live on the NAS it will only execute if it's connected.
The script (can be copied to any location - preferably the NAS itself) and will build the backups in the same folder.
make_backups_root_and_home.sh
#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -e
if [ "$EUID" -ne 0 ]
then echo "Please run as root"
exit
fi
log="log.txt"
power=$(cat /sys/class/power_supply/AC/online)
start_date=$(date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S)
if (( $power == 1 )); then
echo "Starting backup $log at $start_date" >> $log
# ROOT IMAGE
root_backup_file=$start_date-root-backup.sqsh
sudo mksquashfs / $root_backup_file -e home media dev run mnt proc sys tmp nfs
# ALL HOMES IMAGE
home_backup_file=$start_date-home-backup.sqsh
sudo mksquashfs /home $home_backup_file -e Dropbox GoogleDrive
finish_date=$(date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S)
echo "Completed $root_backup_file and $home_backup_file at $finish_date" >> $log
else
echo "Power is not plugged in... skipped on $start_date" >> $log
fi
Don't forget to chmod +x make_backups_root_and_home.sh!
To enable the cronjob:
sudo su
crontab -e
For Sunday at 1am, append:
00 01 * * sun /nas_path/to/your/make_backups_root_and_home.sh >> /nas_path/to/your/log.txt 2>&1
As with all good backups, they should be tested! Finally, we can create a script to mount the last available backup (since they are ordered by date).
mount_last_backup.sh
#!/usr/bin/env bash
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/root_backup
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/root_home
#UMOUNT ANY
sudo umount /mnt/root_backup
sudo umount /mnt/home_backup
last_root=$(ls -Xrt -1 *root-backup* | head -n 1)
last_home=$(ls -Xrt -1 *home-backup* | head -n 1)
sudo mount $last_root /mnt/root_backup -t squashfs -o loop
sudo mount $last_home /mnt/home_backup -t squashfs -o loop
TimeShift.
TimeShift protects your system by taking incremental snapshots of the file system at regular intervals. These snapshots can be restored later to bring your system to the exact state it was in at the time when the snapshot was taken.
Open the terminal and run the following command
sudo apt-add-repository -y ppa:teejee2008/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install timeshift
Screenshots
If you hard-disk where Ubuntu is installed isn't too big, you can try booting from a live cd (any linux distro will do) and running:
dd if=/dev/sda of=/path/to/external/hardisk/mybackupfile
This makes a backup of your whole hard-disk, not just Ubuntu, and it'll also do all the empty bytes, but it's the only solution I can think of. To restore the backup, use:
dd if=/path/to/external/harddisk/mybackupfile of=/dev/sda
You can use tools like Bacula Community or Bacula Enterprise. The difference between them is that community version doesn't support bare metal restores when you don't need to re-install the system and just purely recover it after the major crash.
You can backup your entire Ubuntu installation to another partition with this answer:
Advantages of this technique:
/etc/fstab is automatically updated with proper UUID entries.
Systemback – Restore Ubuntu Desktop and Server To Previous State (Free tool)
"Systemback is a free utility that can be used to backup and restore Ubuntu-like systems. It is somewhat similar to MS Windows’s “System restore” option. Using Systemback, we can easily create backup of a Ubuntu desktop or server system, and restore them to the previous state whenever we want. It creates one or more restore points date and time-wise, and displays the most recent restore points at the top. Not only restore points, we can also create the complete backup of your live system including user configuration files and data as ISO, and save them in an external hard disk."
go to ubuntu software center find Déjà Dup backup manger install it`` run it and give path where to backup your data select files to be backup make a back up
later on you can chose backup by giving location of your external hard drive gud luck source [https://launchpad.net/deja-dup]
This works for me on a Ubuntu 18.04 desktop, and only requires 'Disks' (gnome-disk-utility), gparted and standard grub commands.
Within the utilities system, run 'Disks' and click on the partition to restore to
Run gparted
df -hT
# you will get something like ..
/dev/sda6 xx xx /media/fred/ba5b7f3a-54d2-4325-80e5-e7a159900d3f/etc/fstab
sudo vi /media/fred/ba5b7f3a-54d2-4325-80e5-e7a159900d3f/etc/fstab
# ensure all systems are found
sudo os-prober
# generate /boot/grub/grub.cfg
sudo update-grub
# search for root=UUID and check that the new UUID is used in some of these
# if not, try sudo grub-mkconfig, seems to get it right eventually
less /boot/grub/grub.cfg
# update the master boot record
sudo grub-install /dev/sda
df -hT | grep ext4
/dev/sda6 ext4 29G 6.1G 22G 23% /
/dev/sdb6 ext4 112G 86G 22G 81% /data
/dev/sda4 ext4 1.6T 377G 1.1T 26% /sata
sudo os-prober
sudo update-grub
sudo grub-install /dev/sda
A side note: Make sure permissions and owernship are preserved when copying or your backed up copy will be unusable (annoyingly, reinstalling is then the fastest way to recover).
A tar file like that used in the accepted answer will preserve permissions and ownership (see tar manpage and this answer). NTFS drives support permissions if mounted with permissions. FAT has no support. For other filesystems, rather than messing around with mounting options and /etc/fstab, you should use tar and rest assured permissions/ownership is preserved.
I can recommend my solution which was created with the goal of minimizing space requirements: https://github.com/vbence/osbackup
It can restore a bootable system to an empty media as long as you only use the following technologies.
It covers:
Crashplan will back up all your system files and data and allow you to recover it - either on your current PC or allow you to adopt it to another install.
You can back up to their online system, another computer or any attached hard drive.
I have found you a detailed and recent how to on using Clonezilla. Clonezilla will let you make an image of your complete system including all hard drive partitions etc and later restore it.
The tutorial is at http://geekyprojects.com/cloning/how-to-use-clonezilla-tutorial/
I use a program called Back In Time that's similar to Apple's Time Machine.
It's easy to tell it where you want your backups to go and how often to do the backup.
Back In Time is in the Ubuntu repos.
