A Versatile System Backup Script - Tar and Restore


A Versatile System Backup Script - Tar and Restore

System Tar and Restore is a versatile system backup script for Linux systems. It comes with two bash scripts, the main script star.sh and a GUI wrapper script star-gui.sh, which perform in three modes: backup, restore and transfer.

Features

  1. Full or partial system backup
  2. Restore or transfer to the same or different disk/partition layout.
  3. Restore or transfer backup to an external drive such as USB, SD card etc.
  4. Restore a BIOS-based system to UEFI and vice versa.
  5. Arrange a system in a virtual machine (such as virtualbox), back it up and restore it in a normal system.

Requirements:

  1. gtkdialog 0.8.3 or later (for the gui).
  2. tar 1.27 or later (acls and xattrs support).
  3. rsync (for Transfer Mode).
  4. wget (for downloading backup archives).
  5. gptfdisk/gdisk (for GPT and Syslinux).
  6. openssl/gpg (for encryption).

How to Install System Tar and Restore Tool in Linux

To install System Tar and Restore program, you need to first install all the required software packages as listed below.
$ sudo apt install git tar rsync wget gptfdisk openssl [On Debian/Ubuntu]

# yum install git tar rsync wget gptfdisk openssl [On CentOS/RHEL]
# dnf install git tar rsync wget gptfdisk openssl [On Fedora]

Once all the required packages installed, now it’s time to download these scripts by cloning the system tar and restore repository to your system and run these scripts with root user privileges, otherwise, use the sudo command. Type sudo -i and type the root or your password when prompted.
$ cd Download
$ git clone https://github.com/tritonas00/system-tar-and-restore.git
$ cd system-tar-and-restore/
$ ls

Install System Tar and Restore Linux System Backup

First create a directory where your system backup files will be stored (you can actually use any other directory of your choice).
$ sudo mkdir /backups

Now run the following command to create a system backup file in /backups directory, the archive file will be compressed using the xz utility, where the flags are.
  • -i – specifies the operation mode(0 meaning backup mode).
  • -d – specifies destination directory, where the backup file will be stored.
  • -c – defines the compression utility.
  • -u – allows for reading additional tar/rsync options.
$ sudo ./star.sh -i 0 -d /backups -c xz -u "--warning=none"

Perform Linux System Backup

To exclude the /home in the backup, add the -H flag, and use gzip compression utility as shown.
$ sudo ./star.sh -i 0 -d /backups -c gzip -H -u "--warning=none"

Restore Linux System Backup

You can also restore a backup as in the following command.
$ sudo ./star.sh -i 1 -r /dev/sdb1 -G /dev/sdb -f /backups/backup.tar.xz

where the option are:
  • -i – specifies operation mode (1 meaning restore mode).
  • -r – defines targeted root (/) partition.
  • -G – defines the grub partition.
  • -f – specified the backup file path.
The final example show how to run it in transfer mode (2). The new option here is -b, which sets the boot partition.
$ sudo ./star.sh -i 2 -r /dev/sdb2 -b /dev/sdb1 -G /dev/sdb

In addition, if you have mounted /usr and /var on separate partitions, considering the previous command, you can specify them using the -t switch, as shown.

$ sudo ./star.sh -i 2 -r /dev/sdb2 -b /dev/sdb1 -t "/var=/dev/sdb4 /usr=/dev/sdb3" -G /dev/sdb

We have just looked a few basic options of System Tar and Restore script, you can view all available options using the following command.

$ star.sh --help

If you are accustomed to graphical user interfaces, you can use the GUI wrapper star-gui.sh instead. But you need to install gtkdialog – used to create graphical (GTK+) interfaces and dialog boxes using shell scripts in Linux.

System Tar and Restore Gui

You can find more command-line usage examples from the System Tar and Restore Github repository: https://github.com/tritonas00/system-tar-and-restore.
Summary

System Tar and Restore is a simple yet powerful, and versatile system backup script for Linux systems. Try it out comprehensively and share your thoughts about it via the feedback form below.

We are trying to bring all the content to YouTube and show every other spec and characteristics of this phone and many others, so we need your help to make it possible. Share, like, subscribe and active the notification to stay tuned and to access our giveaways.
Donate with PayPal
And we apreciate your donation to make new reviews and giveaways

Don’t forget to follow us in:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Android Security Bulletin: Everything you need to know!

Image
Fixing the latest bugs and exploits in Android every month. Google has detailed the latest Android Security Bulletin and released the fixes for Nexus and Pixel devices. These are exploits and other security concerns that affect Android as a whole. Issues with the operating system, kernel patches, and driver updates may not affect any particular device, but these need to be fixed in the Android base by the folks maintaining the operating system code. That means Google, and they've detailed the things they have improved for this month. Updated factory images for Pixel and Nexus devices that are supported are available, and over-the-air updates are rolling out to users. If you don't want to wait, you can download and flash the factory image or OTA update file manually, and here are some handy instructions to get you started. How to manually update your Nexus or Pixel The company that made your phone uses these patches to send an update out to you. These changes have ...
Read more

Doogee BL12000 Pro

Image
Doogee BL12000 Pro   The New King of Battery Life has arrived Long has Oukitel reigned supreme when it came to smartphones with insanely big batteries… well there’s a new kid on the block and he’s called the Doogee BL12000 Pro and it comes with 12000mAh’s worth of battery juice. It’s been the inevitable fate of Doogee phones to progress to these record breaking levels. First the Doogee BL5000 was released… then the Doogee BL7000 and now they’ve strapped two 6000mAh batteries back-to-back to make the record breaking Doogee BL12000 Pro! So what does 12000mAh of battery juice look like when it’s squashed between two pieces of glass and called a smartphone? A Beast! The Doogee BL12000 Pro comes in at 300 grams with a thickness of 14mm. It’s essentially two smartphones in weight and thickness while having 4X the battery power. Well, unlike the advanced rocket industry, when smartphones get this big and heavy we start to ask ourselves… wouldn’t it just be easier to carr...
Read more

Zeal, a developer documentation browser

Image
In the next article we are going to take a look at Zeal. This is a tool that will provide us with an offline documentation browser for software developers. Zeal is inspired by Dash, which is a commercial application developed especially for Mac OS. Zeal provides documentation sets (docsets) for a large number of programming languages ​​and different software. You can read them all, online or by downloading the documentation to your team. This will allow any developer to find everything they need without having to search Google or check the official documentation page. You just have to download the set of documentation that we want to use. Zeal will take care of everything else. At the time that I am writing this article, there are 192 sets of useful documentation for all kinds of developers. You can consult the languages ​​available in the following screenshot. All those documents are generously provided by Dash. These documents are updated and maintained with great care. Bu...
Read more