Re: saving to alternative disk directory [a little more than semi OT]

[Paul Lagasse pglagasse@xxxxxxxx]

Raphael Tennenbaum wrote:
> don't want to get too off-topic, but in case you weren't familiar with
> it, Compiz-Fusion is a big help with organizing windows, and it looks
> really cool as well -- the famous Desktop Cube is extremely useful (I
> keep my Xy windows on a desktop apart from all the other stuff).
I tried to amuse my kids with the spinning cube, but no one was as
intrigued as I was; I think they liked wobbly windows better. I liked
the desktop wall better as a means of switching desktops, but then lost
interest in extra desktops altogether; isn't there a country song, "I'm
a One Desktop Man" -- that's me. I just alt-tab a lot.
> the desktop installation certainly benefited from my experience using
> the netbook -- just my understanding of symlinks alone saved a lot of
> work, since I simply pointed to the old Xy directories on the original
> partitions.
> except for a few bits here and there, I'm pretty much set -- the only
> concern is backup. I've got an external 1-tb HD on which I run Grsync
> (very simple gui frontend for rsync) daily on /home and the partition
> where the Xy files live. quite barebones, but my understanding of
> rsync is less than elementary. I should probably figure out a
> bulletproof system whereby in a disaster I could reinstall the whole
> system with one command, but it's easy to put off doing that kind of
> delving. how are you backing up?
for starters, all my critical data files are on a separate partition,
which is mounted as ~/data, and also functions as dosemu's drive D:. All
the standard Documents, Pictures, etc folders in $HOME are symlinks to
subdirectories of ~/data, and certain essential files in ~/.dosemu
(config.sys, autoexec.bat, etc) are symlinks to files in ~/data/xy4
subdirs; .dosemurc is also a symlink to a file on a ~/data subdir. (It
would have been smarter just to symlink my entire ~/.dosemu/drive_c
folder, and I'll probably do that at some point.)
My most critical files get backed up several times a day to a thumbdrive
using a selective but not very sophisticated script, using a separate
thumbdrive for each weekday, and every Friday all of ~/data gets copied
to an external USB hard drive that also has a bootable persistent Ubuntu
installation. I use my portable less than my desktop, so I don't have to
keep the former in sync.
Every now and then I use remastersys to make an installable DVD of my
main desktop distro, but that only preserves the programs installed from
repositories. I also use partimage to backup the entire / partition as
installed every now and then. Because partimage can't be run off the
partition being backed up, I think the best way to use partimage on a
netbook (without CD/DVD drive) would be to put a persistent Ubuntu
installation on a USB harddrive (or thumbdrive), then add partimage (and
other rescue tools) to the installation, and then use partimage to back
up the partition to an ext3 partition on the USB harddrive (or if using
a thumbdrive, to an ext3 formatted USB harddrive or USB HD partition).
The only reason for using a thumbdrive is that there are automated
installations for creating a persistent Ubuntu thumbdrive; creating a
similar setup on an external hard drive is more hands on, but not
especially difficult. (If you're interested, I can send you more details
directly; you could easily convert yr external HD.) Alternatively you
could use an external CD drive to run a distro with partimage
(clonezilla or systemrescuecd, for ex.) and back up to an external hard
drive. Partimage is a terminal program but is easy to use. I've never
actually had to restore from an image, so I can't personally vouch for
that process.
The nice thing about a bootable live/persistent external hard drive is
that you can run it off any machine that a Live Ubuntu or other Linux CD
can run on (assuming it will boot off a USB HD), and you can save
changes to the external HD and install new programs. I even managed put
a Live/Persistent installation on the same VFAT partition a Western
Digital backup program occupied (there were no directory or file name
conflicts), so the drive can backup in Windows and boot Linux Mint.

Paul