GNU/Linux Desktop Survival Guide by Graham Williams
Desktop Survival Project Home Preface Advocacy History Distributions Installing GNU/Linux Basic Survival Wajig Applications AI, Machine Learning, Data Science Android - GNU/Linux Devices Audio Backup Booting CD Chinese ChRoot Clock Command Line Databases DIA Directories Disks EcoSysL Emacs Email Evolution Files File Systems Firewalls Floppy Disks FreedomBox Glade GNOME Graphics, Images, Photos Hardware Initialisations on Booting Installation Examples Internet IOT Java KDE Kernels Keyboard Konqueror KVM Switch LATEX Log System Login Magellan MATE Mathematics Memory Modems Mounting Devices MS/Windows Music MySQL Nautilus Networks Nextcloud Network File System NFS NT File System Oracle Packages Partitions Passwords PDF Power Management PPP Presentations Printing Python R Remote Desktops Rsync Samba Scanning Science Screens Security Spreadsheet SSH Swap Teradata Data Warehouse Themes TV Unity USB Version Control Video Virtualization Voice over IP WebCam WordPress Web Sites Word Processing and Printing X XML Troubleshooting Index

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE UPDATED SURVIVAL GUIDE

Mondo Backup

Debian Packages: mondo mondo-doc

Mondo can be used to backup to DVD. We illustrate a recipe here.

First test things out with:

  # mondoarchive -OVr -d /dev/dvd -9 -I /etc -gF

This will generate a bootable DVD that also backs up /etc. You can boot from this DVD and then recover files. Alternatively, and more typically, you can recover files running mondorestore. This starts up a basic interface to select files to be recovered.

All of the operation of mondoarchive is controlled by command line options. The -O option says to do a backup, and the -V says to verify the backup. The -r option indicates that a DVD is to be used as the backup media, with /dev/dvd as the device specified with the -d option. The -9 requests the highest level of compression, -g requests the GUI mode, and -F removes a unnecessary request to write a boot floppy.

We can now backup our whole /home and /etc directories. You can specify what to backup on the command line:

  # mondoarchive -OVr -d /dev/dvd -9 -I "/etc /home" -gF

And you can refine this by specifying those directories you do not want backed up:

  # mondoarchive -OVr -d /dev/dvd -9 -I "/etc /home" \
    -E "/home/share /home/kayon/mp3" -gF

Note that the backups will start to take some time - likely to be several hours depending on how much is to be backed up.

One strategy might be to create several backups, each of a specific area of about the size that will fit onto the DVD (compressed). Then cycle through these backup regions, always keeping two backups (the current and the previous).