[SOLVED] Backing up the system while the system is running?

Is it ok if I backup the system while it's running? Or does it *have* to be done from a LiveCD?
I was thinking of using this:
$ sudo rsync -avx /* /mnt/Backup --exclude={/dev/*,/proc/*,/sys/*,/tmp/*,/run/*,/mnt/*,/media/*,/lost+found}
Rsync will complain at the end that "some files/attrs were not transferred", but the backup works fine (as far as I can tell).
Should I add "[...] > sometextfile.txt" at the end, to see which files weren't transfered right? Has anyone else done something like this before?
Last edited by DSpider (2012-06-14 15:56:03)

DSpider wrote:Rsync is not necessarily better, but it does the job. I'm planning on transferring the system to a loopback device (a raw .img file) which will serve as a container for chrooting, and later converting to .vdi for use in VirtualBox. It's a fun project I'm working on: "Moving an existing Arch install to VirtualBox" (title in progress). Maybe I'll write a wiki article, since I did it three times already... And it works, even if I back them up while the system is running. I was just wondering what those files were.
Oh, alright. Cool. Yeah, I just wanted to check whether there was any important differences between tar and rsync. I think I'll check the wiki and do some reading about the two, but from the sound of it, it sounds more like a matter of preference than anything else, which is groovy.
Last edited by lspci (2012-06-13 15:08:01)

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[SOLVED] Backing up the system while the system is running?

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