Best procedure for full backup of live system

[Matthew Seaman]

Warren Block wrote:

>> Lastly, it says save all boot messages.  Do they mean the output of
>> dmesg?  Why is this useful?
> 
> It would show what hardware was in the old machine and what services are 
> running on startup.  Backup in general is making copies of information 
> you won't need as long as you have a backup of it.

The system already creates a copy of the first part of the system boot 
output for you: /var/run/dmesg.boot  -- this shows you what hardware the
kernel discovered as it probed all of the buses and so forth.  It doesn't
contain the rest of the output from all of the /etc/rc.d/* and
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/* startup scripts.

The simple way to capture all that is to enable console.log in /etc/syslog.conf
-- you want to uncomment this line:

console.info                                    /var/log/console.log

and make sure that /var/log/console.log exists, then restart syslog.  This
will log all console output, including the boot-up output.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                   7 Priory Courtyard
                                                  Flat 3
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey     Ramsgate
                                                  Kent, CT11 9PW

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