[Borgbackup] Bare Metal Backup?

[Antoine Beaupré]

On 2017-07-28 07:18:33, Stan Armstrong wrote:
> Is there a straightforward way of using borgbackup to do a full metal
>
> backup/restore of my system partition?
>
> I am running Debian Stretch 9.1. I would like to back it up in such a
> way that if my SSD boot drive is destroyed, I can restore my system
> immediately in bootable condition. All of the solutions I have located
> are too complex for my aging brain. I have understood borg well enough
> to use it for many months, backing up various partitions to and from
> other drives both locally and via SSH on my household LAN. I automated
> everything by writing simple scripts and using cron.
>
> I suspect that I simply don't know how to make a restored partition
> bootable.

I suspect so as well. :)

There's nothing like just trying a full restore to see if you actually
have a "bare metal" backup. Nothing short of that will prove that you
have the correct data set but also procedures.

I'm in the process of doing exactly that here, by changing my disk
replacement procedure with a full backup/restore procedure. It's a
higher downtime than a RAID replacement, of course, but this is a home
system, not High Availability (HA) so it seems like the right course of
action.

My procedure, therefore, is to:

 1. format the hard drive (may vary according to your configuration,
    mine includes LUKS crypto and LVM, for example)
 2. make a manual backup backup
 3. restore to the hard drive
 4. restore boot loader (probably just grub-install in a chroot)
 5. reboot on the new drive

I still have to test this, and I suspect I'm missing a bunch of things
from the backup, but that's the gist of it for now. :)

Cheers,

A.

-- 
Brief is this existence, as a fleeting visit in a strange house.
The path to be pursued is poorly lit by a flickering consciousness.
                       - Albert Einstein