YaST/Modules/System Backup

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System Backup is used to create a backup of your files and system areas.

System Backup

This backup tool searches files on your system and creates a backup archive from them. It is a small, easy-to-use backup program. If you need advanced features, such as incremental backup or network backup, you should use an expert tool.

This dialog shows the list of currently stored backup profiles. A backup profile is used to name a group of different settings, such as the name of an archive and how to search for files.

You can have a number of profiles, each with a unique name. Using the actions in Profile Management, you can add a new profile based on default values, duplicate an existing profile, change the settings stored in a profile, or delete a profile. Use the Automatic Backup option to configure routine backups of the selected profile.

Press Create Backup to start the backup using settings stored in the currently selected profile. Press Back Up Manually to use default settings that can be modified before starting the backup process.

Archive Settings

To create a backup of your system, enter the absolute path for the file in which to store the backup in Filename.

If you are storing your archive as a local file, a good place to store your archives might be /backup. The backup directory should be mounted on a physically different device than the device you are backing up. It is recommended that you mount and unmount the backup device before and after you perform the backup to prevent inadvertently deleting your archive(s). External USB disks can serve well for this purpose.

If another device is not available to you, you can still store your archives in a /backup directory on the same filesystem. Be sure to copy the archives to a different media, such as DVD-R, otherwise in case of catastrophic disk failure, you wont be able to access your archive(s) in order to rebuild your system.

In both of the cases above, you will want to exclude the /backup directory in Search Constraints

To store the file on an NFS server, select Network as the location and enter the server details.

The backup module creates a tar archive with changed files and an autoinstallation profile for easy and fast system reinstallation. The YaST backup module compares file flags stored in the package database with actual file properties and backups only files which differ, the result is small backup archive. To store only the names of detected files instead of creating an archive, select Only Create List of Files Found.

If you use ACLs (access control lists) for file access and want to back them up, select the subarchive type star. To create a multivolume archive, for example, for storage on a fixed-size media like CDs, use Options to configure these settings.

Backup Options

Here, select which parts of the system to search and back up. Archive Description is an optional description of the backup archive.

The archive will contain files from packages that were changed since package installation or upgrade. For example, if you have installed the Apache Web Server using YaST Software Management, configuration files such as httpd.conf that were modified will be archived, but the unpacked package will not. Instead, an AutoYaST configuration profile will be generated that will allow you to perform a system recovery from the archive without having to archive the actual packages.

Files that do not belong to any package such as files on your desktop, packages, applications, and libraries that were NOT installed by YaST Software Management can be optionally added to the archive by checking Backup Files Not Belonging to Any Package.

Check Display List of Files to show and edit a list of files found before creating the backup archive.

If you select Check MD5 Sum, the MD5 sum is used to determine if the file was changed. It is more reliable than checking the size or modification time, but takes longer.

Expert Backup Options

Some advanced configuration options can be set in this dialog. Usually there is no need to modify the default values.

System areas, such as partition table or ext2 image, can be added to the backup archive with Back Up Hard Disk System Areas. These system areas can only be restored from an archive manually.

In Temporary Directory, set the location in which parts of the archive are stored before the final archive is created. The temporary directory should have enough free space for the entire archive.

System Area Backup

Critical disk system areas can be added to the backup archive. They can be used to restore the system in case of a crash.

Search Constraints

Included Directories It is possible to limit the search to back up only selected directories. To add a new directory, click Add and select a directory. To change or delete a directory, select it and click Edit or Delete. If you do not select any directory or if you delete all already listed ones, the entire file system is searched and backed up. Constraints

It is possible to exclude some files from the backup. Search constraints can be a directory, file system, or regular expression. Use Edit to modify an existing constraint. Delete removes the selected constrain. To add a new constraint, click Add then select the type of constraint. Directory: All files located in the specified directories will not be backed up.

File System: It is possible to exclude all files located on a certain type of file system (such as ReiserFS or Ext2). The root directory will always be searched, even if its file system is selected. File systems that cannot be used on local disk, such as network file systems, are excluded by default. Regular Expressions: Any filename that matches any of the regular expressions will not be backed up. Use Perl regular expressions. To exclude, for example, *.bak files, add the regular expression \.bak$.

Automatic Backup

The selected profile can be started automatically in the background without any user interaction.

To start the backup automatically with the selected profile, check Start Backup Automatically and set how often and when the backup should be started. Use the 24-hour clock format for Hour.

The previous backup archive, if it exists, will be renamed by putting the date in the form YYYYMMDDHHMMSS at the beginning of the filename. If the number of old archives is greater than the predefined value, the oldest archives are deleted.

For the root user to receive information about the backup, select Send Summary Mail to User root. This summary contains information about the files included in the backup and any errors that occur.

See Also

• YaST

External links

• YaST at Novell
• Backing Up Critical Data

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Features of a new YaST2 module

Name: Backup module

Purpose: Backup changed files, partition table and critical ext2 areas

Features:

   * backup files which were changed since package installation

   * can backup files which do not belong to any RPM package
     (can exclude selected filesystems/directories/files from search)

   * create tar backup file (with tar, tar.gz, tar.bz2 or star package archives)
            or only store list of changed files

   * backup partition table (text: sfdisk -d, raw:dd)

   * backup ext2 critical data (e2image)

   * additional information is part of the archive (hostname,
       date of backup, user comment, installed packages...)

   * support ACLs (only star subarchives)

   * write autoinstallation profile for easy system reinstallation

   * restore files from archive (by Yast2 Restore module)

   * profile manager (reuse previous setting)