How to recover from disaster?

[OldGrantonian]

I have dual-boot Vista and Karmic.

I'm new to Linux. I want to plan my disaster strategy.

If I lose the Ubuntu partition, I plan to do the following:

• Re-install from the ISO CD
• Restore the offline (rsync) backups for the following directories:

/home
/etc
/usr/local
/var

Have I chosen the correct directories so that I will *exactly replicate* my current configuration? (Apart from files that changed between the backup and the failure!! I obviously don't want to back up anything that does never changes relative to the installation ISO CD )
.

[Roxoff]

You can do this, but you will not be storing individual user's settings - these are stored in each /home directory. If you're going down this road you should include users documents and maybe things like their .gnome directories.

My backup plan is different to yours. I have notes on how my config was formed from a base install, so if the worst happens, I re-install from the installer DVDs (I'd acutally use the latest version of CentOS from the network install disk) and I'd be back up with reconfigured services in less than half a day - that's everything - web server, samba, email, user accounts, all back and ready for home directory restore.

Also my home directories are on a different physical disk (and a different LVM) so if the system drive goes down the data is all there.

I've never had a complete system failure - I've only ever used my notes to re-install the server from scratch as part of a hardware upgrade.

[OldGrantonian]

I have Karmic. I've experimented with grsync, and I can use it successfully. I hope

My disaster recover plan was as follows:

• Re-install Karmic from ISO CD.
• Recover the following offline directories from HDD:
∘ /etc
∘ /home
∘ /usr/local
∘ /var

When I try this plan, I was assuming that my configuration would then be identical to the pre-disaster configuration.

The test configuration that I've backed up is as follows:
• DVD player working OK
• Broadcom STA driver activated
• Wireless working OK
• gnome-commander installed
• gnometris (a default game) uninstalled (grsync will delete files from the destination that are not on the source)

However, when I test my plan by re-installing from CD, then using grsync to pull back the directories, I don't see any change from the installed CD configuration. None of the "backed up" configuration changes take effect.

BTW: When I do the grsync restores, I can see many files being transferred from my external HDD to my laptop. This proves that something is happening, because I've configured grsync so that files on the laptop can be updated, but identical files are not transferred.

Am I backing up the correct directories to restore a pre-disaster configuration?
.

[oz]

I've not ever used grsync so can't really offer any advice on that, but you could also consider using something like Clonezilla for your recovery efforts.

Using it, you could make images of your complete system, or you could image just certain partitions if you wish. I personally use a Linux version of Acronis True Image from a live disk that allows me to image the complete system in under 5 minutes, and a full system restore takes about the same length of time. Doing this has worked very well for me over the last 5 or 6 years, and saved me countless hours of grief.

In the interim, maybe someone more familiar with grsync will chime in with more tips for you.

[OldGrantonian]

you could also consider using something like Clonezilla for your recovery efforts.

Thanks for the suggestion

But the point of the original post was to try to find out which directories I need to back up in order to restore my current configuration after a re-install from the CD. After I know that, I can try several different methods, including Clonezilla.