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Re: [Sheflug] openSuse md5sum help
On Wednesday 31 December 2008 23:26:37 Janet Simpson wrote:
> Hi Everyone,
>
> I would appreciate some help.
>
> Finally I have made the decision to upgrade from Suse 10.2 to Suse 11.1.
>
> So I have downloaded the iso image and md5 to my hard drive.
>
> I have gone opened a console and gone to the directory and typed md5sum
> and the filename.
>
> This is the same as the md5 provided on the website.
>
> I have then (I hope burned the iso image, instead of copied) to a DVD,
> the DVD is now called SU1110.01.
>
> How do I check the md5sum for the DVD?
md5sum /dev/whatever-your-DVD-drive-is
> I would also be grateful for some backup and partitioning advice.
>
> I normally backup my home drive using:
> tar cvf /windows/D/tar /home/name
>
> I have a big drive that has windows and linux on it, then I have a
> smaller secondary drive which is shared by windows and linux.
>
> This secondary drive is where I backup my /home to and then I burn it to
> a DVD. So I have a backup on my secondary drive and a DVD, however in
> the past few months I have hit the problem that the backup is larger
> than 4gb.
>
> I found this written down:
> tar cvf /windows/D/shared/-home.tar /home/name
> file limit exceeded
> split -b 3500m /home/-home.tar.
> Then to merge:
> cat xa > my-home.dir.tar.bzr
>
> Not sure that I have ever used this.
>
> So I need to beable to put my home directory on the secondary drive
> whilst I do a fresh install of Suse 11.1.
>
> I was going to do some housekeeping and clear out the stuff I don't need
> and then maybe copy my documents and pictures, burn them to DVD.
>
> I just need to know how to copy them so I keep the original dates?
If the shared drive is FAT32 format then it can't handle files bigger than
4GB, which is why this problem is occuring. If you're only just over that
limit then you can try using compression. The simplest way would be to send
the tar output through gzip (quicker but bigger files) or bzip2 (slower but
smaller files) using a 'pipe' (a | symbol), with this command for gzip:
tar cvf - /home/name | gzip > /windows/D/shared/-home.tar.gz
or this one for bzip2:
tar cvf - /home/name | bzip2 > /windows/D/shared/-home.tar.bz2
This will take quite a while though, since the whole thing will be compressed.
If it includes files which are already compressed (Zip, gz, bz2, 7z, mp3,
jpeg, avi, rar, OpenDocument etc.) then they usually won't compress any more,
meaning that the time spent trying to compress them again is wasted.
To get around this you could compress something highly compressible (like text
files, eg. source code, logs, etc.) first and then tar everything like you
already do. For example, if your "Documents" folder contains many text files
which would shrink drastically if compressed you could compress them first:
tar cvf - /home/name/Documents | bzip2 > /home/name/Documents.tar.bz2
Then run your normal tar command, except making sure to exclude the
"Documents" folder (NOTE: This will exclude EVERYTHING named "Documents", so
be careful that the name you choose to exclude doesn't occur elsewhere):
tar cvf /windows/D/shared/-home.tar --exclude=Documents /home/name
If your backups are getting pretty huge then compression might not be enough
to bring them under 4GB, so you can try splitting them into many files using a
command like:
tar cvpf - /home/name | (cd /windows/D/shared;split -b 4024m - "-home.tar." )
This will write to a file called /windows/D/shared/-home.tar.aa until it
reaches 4GB then it will start writing to a file called /windows/D/shared/-
home.tar.ab, and so on.
This makes things slightly more complicated though. You no longer have one
file to restore if you ever need to, meaning that you'll have to unarchive the
backup using a command like this:
cd your-destination; cat /windows/D/shared/-home.tar.* | tar xf -
And you'll also have to keep track of the files. If your most recent backup
takes up less space than a previous one then you may end up trying to
unarchive -home.tar.aa, -home.tar.ab and -home.tar.ac when your archive is
only -home.tar.aa and -home.tar.ab.
Hope that helps,
Chris
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