Ubuntu

exact system image and backup

Asked by STempler

I know there are posts relating to this topic. I have read through them and am still not completely sure the methods described will suit my needs.

What I wont to do;

I dual booted Feisty with my XP in order to take my first dip into the Linux world. I have since fallen in love with and now do just about everything in Ubuntu, only booting into Windows to use my s-video out. The problem is that I only made my Linux partition 6 gigs and as you can guess that went pretty quick. My Linux partition is at the end of my drive so in order to increase the size of it I will have to format. Now getting my system running the way it is now took some doing. Video card, Wireless card, read write support. Lots of questions posted and answered here. Things I would rather not do again. So my question is, is it possible to make an exact image of the partition to where after the format I can restore my system to it's exact state. Drivers, settings, themes, wallpaper, the whole shabang? And if so, how do I go about that.

The media I have available to backup are CDs or USB Drives. NTFS and FAT16 but I have no problem making one of them ext3 if need be.

                                        Thanks in advance

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Helton Dória (helton-doria) said : 		#1

Hi STempler,

I never used it before, but I think that this software http://sourceforge.net/projects/g4l can do what you need. It is distributed as a small live-cd and can be used to clone entire disks or partitions. The cloned images can be stored in the same machine (same disk or not) or in a remote FTP server. Here you can see a little tutorial of how to use it http://pcquest.ciol.com/content/linux/2005/105041202.asp

Hope it helps,

Helton

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STempler (stempler225) said : 		#2

Thank you for the quick response. I ran G4L after reading the directions. Started the image copy, went out for a while. came back and it was still on 53% (where it was when I left). I restarted the machine and received an error message saying that I couldn't log in because GDM, blah blah blah, couldn't wite to home, yada yada yada, disk may be full, contact admin. So I logged into root and found a file that read as 690mb (which is odd because I only had 570mb free on that partition when I started). The file was titled Ubuntu_image_1. The name I selected when running G4L. I deleted and was able to log in under my user name however I am still missing 100 megs. I don't care about the missing space if I can get this to work. So did I do something wrong? Why did it try to create the image on the source drive? Does it do this and then copy it to the destination drive as part of it's process? I know you said that you have never tried this prog. But I thought I would ask anyhow. I'm going to give it another shot. Perhaps I made an error and selected the wrong destination drive.

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STempler (stempler225) said : 		#3

Update:

 So I've gone through the process. I found my error. I had the source and destination drives reversed. I was able to make my image, resize my drive and then restore my image. But I am now missing several gigs of space. I increased the size of the partition to 8 gigs. formatted and then ran the retore. It restored my drive to it's exact state. I mean EXACT including the amount of free space (489.5 megs) The extra space is just gone. It's not calculated in my NTFS partition or this one. What do I do now?

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STempler (stempler225) said : 		#4

A little more on the situation.

Gnome Partition editor shows size: 7.91gb used: 7.21gb unused 734mb

The file browser shows 531mb free.

This may be something simple that I just don't know and I would really appreciate some help.

I'm guessing that the image file is somehow causing the system to read the free space as used but I don't know and have no clue how to fix that. I tried the process twice with the same results.

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Helton Dória (helton-doria) said : 		#5

STempler,

I couldn't test the software today, but I can try tomorrow. In the meantime, I thought you could try the following procedure:
1) Erase you actual linux partition
2) Create a new one with the dimensions of your old partition (the one that you made a image)
3) Restore the image over the new partition
4) Use Gnome partition editor to resize your Linux partition using the unused space

Helton

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STempler (stempler225) said : 		#6

I thank you for your help but while I was dealing with it and since I had formatted the drive anyhow I decided to play around with Gutsy. Unlike my Feisty install the only issue I had was with my Video. It took several hours but I was able to get that sorted out. I think the reason I was so hesitant was due how hard it was for me in Feisty with drivers, codecs, DVD, all that fun stuff that I now know how to solve since dealing with it that first time. It's also solved a couple of issues I wasn't able to solve with occasional lock ups and freezing up after returning from hibernation. So I think now that I have this one running well I am going to make an image as a backup. Thanks again.