[BBLISA] Good way to recover Linux server

[Tom Metro]

Theo Van Dinter wrote:
> snagao wrote:
>> I know Linux doesn't have anything equivalent to AIX's mksysb
>> command,  but can someone please recommend a tool or method for me to back up the
>> OS and recover it quickly for DR testing?
> 
> I don't know of a "all in one" utility off the top of my head, I've always
> either done dump or more likely tar of the files.  Then on bare metal
> recovery, you just boot into a rescue CD, make the partitions and filesystems,
> untar, reinstall the boot loader, reboot.

Instead of tar or dump, you can use dd to image the entire drive, 
including its partition table and boot sector, or an individual 
partition. Similarly Partimage (http://partimage.org/) will let you save 
a partition to a file with the added benefit that it intelligently skips 
over unused space.

As above, you'll need to bootable rescue CD, such as SystemRescueCd 
(http://www.sysresccd.org/), in order to restore partitions on an 
unbootable system.

Try reposting your query on the BLU (www.blu.org) discuss list, as 
you'll find a larger population of Linux users there.

  -Tom