Re: [Duplicity-talk] How to backup the boot partition?

[Tim Riemenschneider]

 Am 13.09.2010 23:52, schrieb Yves Goergen:
>  How can I solve that now? I can imagine the following options:
>
> * Create a second backup set for the boot partition and specify /boot
> for its source.
>
This is the way I do my multi-LV backups. However my LVs to backup are:
- /  (root) (only /etc and /root)
- /home  (whole)
- /var       (only selected directories: lib/mysql, mail, spool/mail are
the most important for me)
Because I only backup data, not programs, I do not backup /boot, /bin,
/usr and the like.
(Of the root-filesystem, I only backup configuration-data (i.e. /etc),
the home of root (/root)  and the output of "dpkg --get-selection"
(which my script places inside /root), that is the list of all installed
packages. In a total-failure case, I reinstall the OS and all (formerly)
installed packages and only then restore the data from the backup.
Reinstalling the OS is a quite fast operation, since the server(s) in
question are rented root-servers, with prepared installation-images
available. The server is a webserver with no custom-programs, so
reinstalling the os-image and restoring webpages (/home) and databases
is enough for me)

On the other hand, the contents of /boot should not change that often
(only when installing a new kernel, or changing the bootloader), so it
can go to a separate backup, if it's needed at all.
(You can simply reinstall the original kernel from inside your
rescue-system, can't you?)

(My backupscript is by the way linked in the contrib-section on the
homepage, if that is interesting to you. At least an earlier version ;-) )

(Oh, and when you go that route: remember to also specify a different
target ;-) )
 
> * Copy all contents from /boot to the snapshot/boot directory (i.e.
> duplicate the boot partition). This may eat up my snapshot space. It
> would probably be the easiest fix.
>
How much unused space does your volumegroup have? (That is, could you
simply allow the snapshot more space?)
> * Mount the boot partition to the snapshot/boot directory as secondary
> mount (how's that called? mount can do some --bind to mount a filesystem
> at two places) so duplicity sees its real contents instead of a) a
> symlink or b) an empty mount point directory.
>
>
That is possibly the simplest solution, since your backup-script
probably contains already code to handle /boot (create symlink), which
could be replaced by a bind-mount. And /boot should not change
mid-backup, so no snapshotting/copying is needed.

cu
Tim