Backups

Archive system files to a file

When creating full system backup it is better to use bsdtar than tar. tar with --xattrs will not preserve extended properties.

1. Boot from live USB.

2. Mount source and destination file systems:

    fdisk -l
   
    mkdir root
    sudo mount </dev/nvme0n1p5> root
   
    mkdir backup
    sudo mount </dev/sda4> backup
   

3. CD to source file system:

    cd root
   

4. Create backup (starting from current folder):

    sudo bsdtar --acls --xattrs -czpvf ../backup/<archive_name>.tar.gz .
   

5. Restore backup (to current folder):

    sudo bsdtar --acls --xattrs -xzpvf ../backup/<archive_name>.tar.gz
   

Archive user files

To archive user files and folders on Linux (tar stores owner/group of the file):

tar -cf archive.tar -C <directory> .

or

tar -cf archive.tar <directory>

where -C <path> (change folder) can be used to not store full path names when whole mount point from some other place, for example:

tar -cf 2021-08-18_listingi.tar -C /media/truecrypt1 .

Compress archive with password

Compression:

7z a -p -mhe=on archive.tar.7z archive.tar

and -mhe=on is for enabling header encryption (cannot list file names).

Decompression:

7z x archive.tar.7z