Complete exact copy!
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If you are wanting exact same partition layout then:
Open Source
Commercial
Or if you just want the data then cpio or tar can achieve those results too
NOTE: Most of these require physical access. If this is to be done via a hosted solution then you may look at the dd/netcat option and you could substitute dd with cpio or tar.
Wayne
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+1 For Clonezilla. I've been deploying Ubuntu business networks (desktop and server) with it for a while now. Set up one workstation to have just what you need, configure ldap/pam .. and viola :) – Tim Post Oct 19 '09 at 07:41
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Acronis works on strange softraid controllers where most rescue distros fail. +1 for Acronis... Worth every cent IMHO. – Icapan Oct 19 '09 at 12:29
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If you don't want to backup partition schema, but data, rdiff-backup is a great tool.
drAlberT
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Take into account that hardware differences might make the copy system unbootable.
Although Linux is more flexible, there might be a situation where the system wont boot.
splattne
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Daniel Leiderman
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Ok... I have to throw this in... backing up Linux via imaging is a disaster waiting to happen. What happens when your hardware dies and you need to migrate to something different - different platform, drivers, etc.? What happens when you want to build a duplicate of the machine for testing, but need to change just a few things?
It's a big pain and a lot of work, but I've been handling this issue with existing infrastructure at work, and I'd really recommend going to a combination of file-based backup and automated installation/configuration. You'll get a lot more flexibility in the long run and, though setting it up for existing hosts is a pain, it will save a lot of trouble when the image eventually needs to be installed on different hardware.
Jason Antman
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To create image
cat /dev/sda | gzip -c > sda.image.gz
To write imageback
sudo sh -c “gunzip -c sda.image.gz | cat > /dev/sda”
Note that /dev/sda is just a generic drive, use "fdisk -l" to find what your drives identifier really is.
Recursion
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You might want to put that the $CWD is NOT on sda, otherwise you may have a bit of an issue here! – Wayne Oct 19 '09 at 07:24
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blank3, yes you can, the drive being imaged just should not be mounted at the time. – Recursion Oct 19 '09 at 14:42
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Mondo Rescue doesn't require physical access. Once saved me from travelling 700km! I just created and downloaded the image, copied it onto a HDD and sent it via mail. Someone just loaded the disk onto slave server and it worked.
Icapan
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