[Novalug] Quick & Dirty Backup Solution?

[Russell Evans]

On Wed, 8 Nov 2006 10:17:09 -0500
"Jon Taimanglo" <jontaimanglo at gmail.com> wrote:

> I've used xxcopy (http://www.xxcopy.com/index.htm) to backup windows
> before and it worked fine (quick glance for restore:
> http://www.xxcopy.com/xxcopy40.htm).  The only reason I would suggest
> a straight windows application is due to the fact that you said you
> would be writing to an NTFS share - I believe (and anyone correct me
> on this), that NTFS writing is still experimental in Linux.
> 

If it is a share then the underlying file system is not important. 


I'm using the following to setup MS Windows boxes that I send to my
remote relatives:The idea to have a reimaging system like those on most
laptops that will restore the Windows OS to a known good state.

Partition disk into three. One MS OS partition, one MS home partition,
and one raw partition to be used by Linux and the image of the MS
Widows OS partition.

Fresh install of MS OS, updates and applications. 

Format the second partition and use Z: and label it "Home". Label C;
"OS" . 

Create user account if it wasn't created during install.

Login as user to create users directories under c:\documents and
settings\

Logout user and login as administrator.

Edit registry for the user account, search for profileimagepath and
then change %systemdrive%\Document and Settings\$user to Z:\$user 

Move c:\Document and Settings\$user directory to z:\$user

Logout as administrator and login as $user. Verify the $user directory
under c:\document and settings didn't come back, it will be created if
you didn't set the path right or did't get the right entry. The user
directory is now on a separate "home" partition so the original install
image can be replaced at anytime without over writing the users files.

Get regseeker, http://www.hoverdesk.net/freeware.htm  and cclenaer,
http://www.ccleaner.com/ run regseeker's registry cleaner in auto mode
- set to 4 times. Run ccleaner reg cleaner. Run cccleaner to clean up
all temp files.

Create c:\temp directory

Change environment setting for all temp files to c:\temp, Make sure you
set the user temp directory as well as the system temp.

Set ccleaner to clear c:\temp at system start. 

Open a folder and then set the folder options to allow viewing system
files.

Set ccleaner to remove the page.sys file at start up. MS Windows will
recreate the file.

Create a file in the temp directory and reboot to verify ccleaner
cleared the temp directory

Run ccleaner to clear the trashcan and temp files

Defrag, defrag again and again until the time it takes to defrag stops
decreasing.

Get bootvis
http://download.microsoft.com/download/whistler/BTV/1.0/WXP/EN-US/BootVis-Tool.exe,
Run the optimize option.

Get the GAG cd iso at http://gag.sourceforge.net/ burn the disk.

Get erasefreespace, http://www.somacon.com/p336.php. Put the script in
the root of the c: partition and run it. This will create files filed
with zeros on the unused portion of c: partition. It will fill the
partition. Once
it completes remove the directory it created.

Set the page.sys file to zero.in the advanced tab in System
Properities, Reboot. For the image we don't
need the pagefile.

Time now to install a minimal Linux install. The box will only boot
into CLM, no graphics.Verify you have dd_rescue,
http://www.garloff.de/kurt/linux/ddrescue/
on the distribution. dd_rescue has the -a spArse file writing (def=no)
option. Since we zeroed the MS partition we can save space on the Linux
partition using a sparse file.

Run dd_rescue to create the image. You can pipe the output to gzip to
compress the image. A 6G MS install will be about 2G with the -9
compression option

Remove all services on the linux side so it can boot very quickly. The
Linux side only needs enough to get to the disks and the file system on
the Linux partition.

Create a batch file and link it in whatever level you are using to call
dd_rescue to copy the image to the partition. The final call in the
script should a call to shutdown -r now to reboot the box. 

Edit your boot loader configuration to remove all delays and extra
entries. It should only allow the default Linux stanza to boot.Password
protect the edit mode so that the user cannot jump init levels  

Now if you reboot; the box should loop continuously replacing the image
on the MS Windows partition.

So now its time to install GAG, http://gag.sourceforge.net/ GAG works
completely in the mbr. With the setup password protected it will be
pretty hard for a user to change. The MS Windows boot is the default and
isn't password protected. Set the delay to 10 seconds so that if needed
the user can boot linux. Set a password for the Linux boot. This will
keep an accidental reimage from happening.The Linux boot will reimage
the MS Windows partition leaving the user's home directory alone.  

Boot back into MS Windows and set the pagefile to what ever makes sense
for your system. It is better to have the min and max be the same size
so the pagefile never grows and then gets fragmented. 

I think that's about it.

Thank you
Russell