Three things . . .

[Roland Smith]

On Mon, Aug 13, 2007 at 12:51:09PM -0700, Mary Evans wrote:

> 2: I'm now pouring over everything I can find about making a reliable
> backup I've just gotten FBSD 6.2 installed with the minimum of my
> favorite utilities and programs.  I want to save the configuration as
> it is so that . . .

Very wise!

The best backup for UFS filesystems is dump(8). The restore(8) program
is used to restore things. This is the only program that can save and
restore all features of UFS filesystem (flags, ACLs etc). And they're
available on all FreeBSD boot CDs, so you don't need to install a base
system and a slew of ports just to restore your backups. :-)

Depending on the size of your filesystems, you can burn the backup to a
CD or DVD, or you can save it to e.g. a USB harddisk. You can gzip the
dumps, but unless you're strapped for space I wouldn't bother.

Note that there are are several things that don't need dumping, like
/tmp, /dev, /usr/ports/distfiles.  See §16.12 of the Handbook on backups,
and http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/freebsd/index.html#backups for a more
in-depth explanation of how I make backups.

Roland
-- 
R.F.Smith                                   http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
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