Filesystem Backup

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#1 Mon, 06/15/2009 - 05:05

neorf

Filesystem Backup

if i do a Filesystem Backup, under Webmin->System->Filesistem backup, what have i to select to reinstall after e new ubuntu server fresh install and how can i restore if Virtualmin is not installated? thanks

neorf

#2 Mon, 06/15/2009 - 10:52

andreychek

Yeah, if you use Virtualmin to perform a backup, you'd then need to install Virtualmin in order to perform the restore.

That's pretty simple with the install.sh script.

A few additional thoughts though:

If you're backing up the entire filesystem, be careful with your restore -- mixing and matching system binaries from multiple distros, or even differing distro versions, could cause some havoc
Similar with config files -- if you're planning to backup and restore /etc/, you'd want to make sure that things don't differ too much between the old and new server
If all you're after is your user data and other things found within the Virtual Servers in Virtualmin, you can back that up from Virtualmin -> Backup and Restore

#3 Mon, 06/15/2009 - 17:04

neorf

i'm just going to do a modification to ubuntu partition system, so i'd just want to have a safe backup if something go wrong. i do regularry backup of virtual server, and virtualmin file configuration, just i've never done a Filesistem backup. So, what do u suggest? just to use my virtual server backups or Filesistem backup or an full ubuntu backup? thanks

neorf

#4 Mon, 06/15/2009 - 18:10

andreychek

What do I suggest? Hmm, good question :-)

I don't know the specifics of how the filesystem backup within Virtualmin works.

However, I kind of like the idea of having a full system backup that's done via rsync. And I kind of like having a backup available that doesn't require Virtualmin to restore it (in addition to all the regular Virtual Server backups being done).

That is, you're doing a file by file backup to some other location -- and rsync is good in that it only copies files that haven't been backed up yet.

So you could run something like this on the server you're backing up:

rsync -auv / some_user@backup_server.example.com:/path/to/backup/dir/

And if you want to do that regularly (which might not be a bad idea!), you could always put the above into regularly scheduled cron job.

So in summary -- what do I recommend?

I recommend having lots of backups! I backup both using the regular Virtual Server backups, and with rsync, just to make extra-sure that my data is available if something happens.

And the Filesystem backup in Virtualmin may work just as well as rsync, but I'm not sure, as I haven't used it yet. -Eric

#5 Wed, 08/12/2009 - 18:37 (Reply to #4)

rrhill

First, what do include and exclude in an rsync backup? You show

sync -auv / some_user@backup_server.example.com:/path/to/backup/dir/

which would include /proc, /dev, /lost+found, /tmp ... should these or any others be excluded?

#6 Wed, 08/12/2009 - 22:32

andreychek

I exclude the ones you mentioned from my backups. I also exclude the /sys directory.

Otherwise, I grab everything else :-)

-Eric

#7 Thu, 08/13/2009 - 10:16 (Reply to #6)

rrhill

So, if you were to use the backup system, you'd boot it and change the IP and hostname to match the live system and all would be good?

#8 Wed, 05/01/2019 - 11:57

Francewhoa

Related documentation page about Filesystem Backup at https://doxfer.webmin.com/Webmin/Filesystem_Backup

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