Backup installed linux on VMware

[harshalk]

Good morning All,

I need help with taking backup of my installed linux so that I can reinstall after formatting my machine.

Let me tell you some background.....
I am using windows XP with VMWare installed on it. In VMWare I have Fedora 11 installed with many extensions/utilities installed like smaba and PHP extensions etc... My problem is I don't remember what all the things linux guy installed in it. Now I want to format my windows which will result in loosing all my things installed on Linux too. Is there anything I can do or backup things which I can restore after my machine format again and get everything like before?

I tried to google it and found the we can create image of linux to restore again anytime... but didn't get idea.

Can you please help with this? Even if you can direct me to a site where I can get some more about this, it would be great.

Thanks to All.

Harshal

[Roxoff]

You can find out which packages are installed with the command 'rpm -qa', which will list them all. You can also list them with the yum tool: try 'yum list installed'.

Rather than reinstall your system, you probably want to save the contents of your home directory (take a look at the man pages for the tape archive command 'tar') and then reinstall your system in the new environment with the latest version of your distribution (Fedora 11 is a couple of years out of date, they just released 16).

You can match the packages that are installed - and you don't even have to add everything at install time, you could install the base system and get things up and running, then use yum to add the packages you want to use as they're needed. One word of warning, though, is that Fedora 16 now uses Gnome 3. You might want to take a look at what's changed before taking the plunge (unless you're not using Gnome, of course).

[jonkiribati]

You can copy the vmware machine files and then you need just to import them.

[basica]

Your VMware files should be under "my documents/virtual machines". If you back up this directory you'll save any virtual machines that you have installed.

If you're using VMware Player, just copy the directory back over to the same spot, or if you're using Workstation, just import them.