Posted on by drakken

Restore a machine from a backup

It is very easy under GNU/Linux to restore a system from a full rsync backup. Just follow this procedure:

  • Boot on a liveCD
  • In case of hard-drive change, partition the new HDD using parted
  • Create a temporary directory and mount the root partition of you HDD inside (/dev/sdb1 in this example):
mkdir /mnt/root_hdd
mount -t ext3 /dev/sdb1 /mnt/root_hdd
  • Restore data from your backup:
rsync -av --numeric-ids --delete --exclude='/proc' --exclude='/sys' /media/<mybackup>/ /mnt/root_hdd/

Data from the root partition will be overwritten, and supernumerary files deleted.

Now in case of disk change, we need to take care of the boot loader also:

  • Install grub:
mount --bind /proc /mnt/root_hdd/proc
mount --bind /dev /mnt/root_hdd/dev
mount --bind /sys /mnt/root_hdd/sys
chroot /mnt/root_hdd
grub-install /dev/sdb1

That’s all, reboot and enjoy.