[ale] Online Backup

[Geoffrey]

Nick Travis wrote:
> Is there a way to create a full system backup, simular to a ghost
> image, of a linux server remotely without taking the server offline? 
> Could you do something like "tar -cf my-system.tar * "?  Or would this
> fail due to files changing as the tar was being created.  Could rsync
> be used, I was thinking it would have to same problem of files
> changing though while it was syncing.  It's a pretty basic system, no
> databases or anything, just dhcp named and a firewall.

You could do this, but be a bit more selective.  For example, you don't 
want to pick up everything in /proc, the tar file will grow without end. 
  As for /proc, I've found you're good if you simply pick up the 
directories there.

You could be even more selective and reduce the size of the backup. 
There's plenty of stuff out there you don't generally need to backup 
like the system binaries.

-- 
Until later, Geoffrey