FSARCHIVER(8)						      System Manager's Manual						     FSARCHIVER(8)

NAME

       fsarchiver - filesystem archiver

DESCRIPTION

       fsarchiver  is  a  system  tool	that  allows you to save the contents of a filesystem to a compressed archive file. The file-system can be
       restored on a partition which has a different size and it can be restored on a different file-system. Unlike tar/dar, FSArchiver also  cre-
       ates  the filesystem when it extracts the data to partitions. Everything is checksummed in the archive in order to protect the data. If the
       archive is corrupt, you just lose the current file, not the whole archive.

LINKS

   Official project homepage:
       http://www.fsarchiver.org

   Quick Start Guide:
       http://www.fsarchiver.org/QuickStart

   Forums where to ask questions:
       http://www.fsarchiver.org/forums/

   Report a bug:
       http://www.fsarchiver.org/forums/viewforum.php?f=17

SYNOPSIS

       fsarchiver [ options ] savefs archive filesystem ...

       fsarchiver [ options ] restfs archive id=n,dest=filesystem[,mkfs=fstype] ...

       fsarchiver [ options ] savedir archive directory ...

       fsarchiver [ options ] restdir archive destination

       fsarchiver [ options ] archinfo archive

       fsarchiver [ options ] probe [detailed]

COMMANDS

       savefs Save filesystems to archive.

       restfs Restore filesystems from archive.  This overwrites the existing data on filesystems.  Zero-based index n indicates the part  of  the
	      archive to restore.  Optionally, a filesystem may be converted to fstype.

       savedir
	      Save directories to archive (similar to a compressed tarball).

       restdir
	      Restore data from archive which is not based on a filesystem to destination.

       archinfo
	      Show information about an existing archive file and its contents.

       probe  Show list of filesystems detected on the disks.

OPTIONS

       -h, --help
	      Show help and information about how to use fsarchiver with examples.

       -V, --version
	      Show program version and exit.

       -v, --verbose
	      Verbose mode (can be used several times to increase the level of details).  The details will be printed to the console.

       -o, --overwrite
	      Overwrite the archive if it already exists instead of failing.

       -d, --debug
	      Debug mode (can be used several times to increase the level of details).	The details will be written in /var/log/fsarchiver.log.

       -A, --allow-rw-mounted
	      Allow to save a filesystem which is mounted in read-write (live backup).	By default fsarchiver fails with an error if the partition
	      if mounted in read-write mode which allows modifications to be done on the filesystem during the backup. Modifications can drive	to
	      inconsistencies in the backup.  Using lvm snapshots is the recommended way to make backups since it will provide consistency, but it
	      is only available for filesystems which are on LVM logical-volumes.

       -a, --allow-no-acl-xattr
	      Allow to run savefs when partition is mounted without the acl/xattr options.  By default fsarchiver fails with an error if the  par-
	      tition  is mounted in such a way that the ACL and Extended-Attributes are not readable. These attributes would not be saved and then
	      such attributes could be lost. If you know what you don't need ACL and Extended-Attributes to be preserved then  it's  safe  to  run
	      fsarchiver with that option.

       -e pattern, --exclude=pattern
	      Exclude files and directories that match that pattern. The pattern can contains shell asterisks such as * and ?, and the pattern may
	      be either a simple file/dir name or an absolute file/dir path. You must use quotes around the pattern each time you  use	wildcards,
	      else  it	would  be  interpreted	by the shell. The wildcards must be interpreted by fsarchiver. See examples below for more details
	      about this option.

       -L label, --label=label
	      Set the label of the archive: it's just a comment about the contents.  It can be used to remember a particular thing about  the  ar-
	      chive or the state of the filesystem for instance.

       -z level, --compress=level
	      Valid compression levels are between 1 (very fast) and 9 (very good).  The memory requirement increases a lot with the best compres-
	      sion levels, and it's multiplied by the number of compression threads (option -j).  Level 9 is considered as an extreme  compression
	      level and requires an huge amount of memory to run.  For more details please read this page: http://www.fsarchiver.org/Compression

       -s mbsize, --split=mbsize
	      Split the archive into several files of mbsize megabytes each.

       -j count, --jobs=count
	      Create  more than one compression thread. Useful on multi-core CPUs.  By default fsarchiver will only use one compression thread (-j
	      1) and then only one logical processor will be used for compression.  You should use that option if you have  a  multi-core  CPU	or
	      more  than  one  physical  CPU  on  your computer. The typical way to use this option is to specify the number of logical processors
	      available so that all the processing power is used to compress the archive very quickly. You may also want to use  all  the  logical
	      processors but one for that task so that the system stays responsive for other applications.

       -c password, --cryptpass=password
	      Encrypt/decrypt  data  in  archive.  Password length: 6 to 64 chars.  You can either provide a real password or a dash ("-c -") with
	      this option if you do not want to provide the password in the command line and you want to be prompted for a password in the  termi-
	      nal instead.

EXAMPLES

   save only one filesystem (/dev/sda1) to an archive:
       fsarchiver savefs /data/myarchive1.fsa /dev/sda1

   save two filesystems (/dev/sda1 and /dev/sdb1) to an archive:
       fsarchiver savefs /data/myarchive2.fsa /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1

   restore the first filesystem from an archive (first = number 0):
       fsarchiver restfs /data/myarchive2.fsa id=0,dest=/dev/sda1

   restore the second filesystem from an archive (second = number 1):
       fsarchiver restfs /data/myarchive2.fsa id=1,dest=/dev/sdb1

   restore two filesystems from an archive (number 0 and 1):
       fsarchiver restfs /data/arch2.fsa id=0,dest=/dev/sda1 id=1,dest=/dev/sdb1

   restore a filesystem from an archive and convert it to reiserfs:
       fsarchiver restfs /data/myarchive1.fsa id=0,dest=/dev/sda1,mkfs=reiserfs

   save the contents of /usr/src/linux to an archive (similar to tar):
       fsarchiver savedir /data/linux-sources.fsa /usr/src/linux

   save a /dev/sda1 to an archive split into volumes of 680MB:
       fsarchiver savefs -s 680 /data/myarchive1.fsa /dev/sda1

   save a filesystem and exclude all files/dirs called 'pagefile.*'
       fsarchiver savefs /data/myarchive.fsa /dev/sda1 --exclude='pagefile.*'

   exclude 'share' in both '/usr/share' and '/usr/local/share':
       fsarchiver savefs /data/myarchive.fsa --exclude=share

   absolute exclude valid for '/usr/share' but not '/usr/local/share'
       fsarchiver savefs /data/myarchive.fsa --exclude=/usr/share

   save a filesystem (/dev/sda1) to an encrypted archive:
       fsarchiver savefs -c mypassword /data/myarchive1.fsa /dev/sda1

   extract an archive made of simple files to /tmp/extract:
       fsarchiver restdir /data/linux-sources.fsa /tmp/extract

   show information about an archive and its file systems:
       fsarchiver archinfo /data/myarchive2.fsa

WARNING

       fsarchiver is still in development, don't use it for critical data yet.

AUTHOR

       fsarchiver  was	written by Francois Dupoux. It is released under the GPL2 (GNU General Public License version 2). This manpage was written
       by Ilya Barygin and Francois Dupoux.

								 30 December 2009						     FSARCHIVER(8)