APC lists some good backup software for Ubuntu. http://apcmag.com/the-best-ubuntu-backup-tools.htm
Archive for the Backups Category
Backup or Sync Firefox 3 Bookmarks
Posted in Backups, Linux, Ubuntu Linux on March 20, 2010 by ubductedIt’s fairly easy to synchronize my firefox 3 bookmarks between two or more computers. If you’ve used firefox 2, your bookmarks were stored in the mozilla firefox folder in bookmarks.html. In firefox 3, your bookmarks are stored in places.sqlite in your profile folder in the main mozilla firefox installation folder.
Just cut and paste places.sqlite to a folder that will be backed up or synchronized. Then select the file, right click, and select Make link (for Ubuntu or Gnome users). This will make a soft link file which you can cut and paste back to where places.sqlite was originally (in your profile folder).
Rename the soft link to places.sqlite and you’re good to go.
Obviously, if you are synchronizing, this won’t “merge” your bookmark entries. One computer should be your main computer and the others just update when it synchronizes. I.e. don’t create bookmarks on your non-main computers. They’ll be overwritten.
Partimage Error – Cannot create temp file
Posted in Backups, Linux on April 4, 2009 by ubductedWhile in SystemRescueCD and using partimage to backup an ext3 filesystem, I kept running into the error:
Error – Cannot create temp file [/dev/sda3/pi878f5c20.tmp]. Please check there is space enough and you have access rights.
The problem is that the hard drive/partition needs to be mounted. Do the following when booted into SystemRescueCD
mkdir /mnt/sda3 (you can call sda3 anything you want. It’s just a folder that you will mount the actual partition you need to store the backup onto)
mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/sda3 ( this will take the partition /dev/sda3 and link it to /mnt/sda3)
After doing this, navigate to /mnt/sda3 and see your folders.
There is a good how-to for Partimage here. It also describes how to restore your image to the partition.
Backup Your MBR on Linux
Posted in Backups, Linux on April 2, 2009 by ubductedUse this command to backup your MBR:
dd if=/dev/hda of=/home/hda.boot.mbr bs=512 count=1
To restore the MBR (from a Live CD), use this command:
dd if=/mnt/hda1/home/hda.boot.mbr of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1
About the dd command:
dd if=<source> of=<target> bs=<byte size>(“USUALLY” some power of 2, not less than 512 bytes(ie, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384[/b], but can be ANY reasonable number.) skip= seek= conv=<conversion>.
Source is the data being read. Target is where the data gets written.
Warning!! If you reverse the source and target, you can wipe out a lot of data. This feature has inspired the nickname “dd” Data Destroyer.
Warning!! Caution should be observed when using dd to duplicate encrypted partitions.
