UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hello,

I was asked by my boss to make a backup of one of our systems that is slated to be decommissioned. When I suggested if could tar the "/" directory he nodded and said that would do the trick,

When I try and execute the command I get EOF error. I think it is because there is not enough space on the drive.

I am thinking of making a remote telnet session to the machine and having the backup stored on another machine...my deskop, which is where I will send the telnet command.

Anyone know the syntax for this?

If you try and backup all filesystems to a tarball on the local machine, you'll go into a loop (backup up the backup file).

To do this via a telnet session is a bit tricky as (I think) telnet isn't really designed for non-interactive stuff.

I recommend ssh (or rsh if you have to):

Code:

server.to.backup# tar -cf - / | gzip -c | ssh -l <username> <destination.server> "cat > /where/you/want/to/store/your/backupfile.tar.gz"

Or

Code:

server.to.backup# tar -cf - / | gzip -c | ssh -l <username> <destination.server> (cat > /where/you/want/to/store/your/backupfile.tar.gz)

(Which command to use depends on your shell, if one fails, use the other)

You can leave out the gzip bit if you wish, that's just there to reduce the size it takes up.

You could also look into using ufsdump instead of tar but that's really a matter of preference.

If you can't use ssh, you should be able to just swap the word "ssh" in the above command for "rsh" (I've used ssh's backwards compatibility flags for that reason).

Supplement to Smiling Dragons post: you can take some load off the server you're backing up by running the compression part on your local machine, eg (using the first command line given as reference):

Code:

tar -cf - / | ssh -l <username> <destination.server> "gzip -9c > /where/you/want/to/store/your/backupfile.tar.gz"