How do I make a complete backup of my system?

hi all,
everytime I try to do a full backup using any tool I get some persmission denied errors, even using sudo. What I want to have is a full backup of my arch laptop so that when I mess it up or something like that, I can recover the ENTIRE system, not just the home folder or certain directories.
What is the best tool for doing this?
I have access to a server at work with a lot of storage space (1 TB) so the best way would something remote, I have tried rsync but either I don't know how to use it or doesn't work to do full systems backup (only folders).
Also, which folders should I exclude? I know I have to exclude /proc and /tmp, but some people also say to exclude /dev and /var/log so I am a little confused.
Thanks for the help!

I have used Larch to create a boo-table image of my system and put it on disk. I would read around that. It's basically a build system, you make a directory on your machine and build the framework for another basic Arch system and define what extra packages you want and some of the repository settings etc. Then you create that install and make an overlay, which is any files you want, like your home folder on your system, as well as files from /etc/ like rc.conf, to make sure your system is not only downloaded the packages, but also configured to use everything right, like in the daemons array, or group and sudo settings and such. Then this is turned into and .iso which can be burned to CD or DVD, and then booted live, and even installed, at a later date. As well as building a system in this way, you can have it work on your current active system.
My only criticism of the system is that it takes up quite a bit of memory to copy files over to the overlay and basically create another Arch install inside a directory, which then gets used to generate the .iso and put on a disk. So I keep deleting the overlays and duplicated files to free up memory again. But if you have plenty of space, just leave it and it's faster in the future.
Most of the scripts are command line, that do all this, and it can take a bit of reading to understand how this process of building a live system works and it's a bit heavy at first, but there is also a GUI available with tabs and such to guide you through the process.
I use it all the time and think it's brilliant.
Cheers,
Ben.
[EDIT] If you had access to your server you might be able build the Arch System Directory to be "Larch-ifyed" (which you would make as close as possible to your running system) on that, and then generate the .iso and hold it there too, as well as on disk, so you could have remote access to the backup .iso from numerous locations.
Last edited by Ben9250 (2010-11-13 01:35:31)

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