Backing Up Atari Mint OS
Backup is one of the most important, yet also one of the most neglected areas of computing. Backing up your system state should be at the top of your computer maintenance list. Without system state backup, you are running the risk of losing your operating system settings and configurations. And it will happen, don't think that you don't have to worry about it. And we are not even talking about your data yet!!
You have spend hours in setting up and configurating your Atari Mint environment. If disaster strikes, you need to be ready for it by having at least a system backup. Restoring the back up, depending on the type of backup you selected, will enable to bring your system back online within minutes instead of hours. Worst would be if you also need to install your applications. Again we are not even talking about your data yet!!
There is a choice for 2 backup methods
Full Disk Back Up - backup the entire disk including applications and data
Configuration Files Back Up - backup only the needed configuration files of Mint
The choice of back up will be entirely up to you.
Full Disk Back Up
This is the best as all data on the drive are back up. By drive, it means Drive C:, Drive D: etc. Note that this does not mean partition, and there is no tool on the Atari that does partition imaging as a backup (may be there are but I do not know of any). You will need another storage device like a tape drive, hard disk, compact flash (CF) or secure digital card (SD card) of equivalent size to store the backup most probably externally mounted. Assumption here is that the storage device will be an external hard disk as it's the easiest of all, and that it is a normal GEMDOS/TOS filesystem.
The Mint system installed by this guide comes in 3 different type of file system namely GEMDOS/TOS filesystem, Ext2 filesystem and Fat32 filesystem. To make a full back up of these filesystem, different tools are needed.
GemDOS TOS filesystem
Easiest is to copy all files and folder on the external storage device. Just select all the files & folder, drag n drop onto the external drive. If you want to, you can also make a compress archive of all the files using STZIP or LHZSHELL into a single archive file (however, I am not sure of the size limitation of these tools). If the drive is large, it may take a lot of time to copy (and more time for compression), so it may be a good idea to invest in the copy tool KOBOLD which copies files in GEMDOS filesystems quickly.
Restoring the files would be just a matter of copying back (or unzipping) the files back on to Drive C:
Ext2 filesystem
Ext2 filesystem differ from GEMDOS/TOS filesystem in that it contain both long file names as well as access control list (ACL, also called permissions). To succesfully backup these 2 extra features, we will need to use a unix archiving tool call TAR (Tape ARchive). TAR can be installed via RPM from Sparemint Archive.
To TAR the entire ext2 filesystem
Open the unix command shell by running tcsh - double click on D:\BIN\TCSH
At the command prompt, move to Drive D: root by typing cd /d (assume Drive D: is Ext2)
Run the TAR command to archive all the file by typing
tar -cvf my_d.tar /d
tar the TAR program
-cvf the parameter: c is create an archive, v is verbose, f is file
my_d.tar create the tar file with this filename
/d the source to archive
(in this case the /d folder which is drive D: and the archive will be created with a folder d in it.)
A file called my_d.tar will be created at the root of Drive D:, just copy this file over to the external hard disk.
You may choose to compress the file my_d.tar to save space.
To restore (UNTAR) the archived ext2 filesystem
Open the unix command shell by running tcsh - double click the TCSH
At the command prompt, move to root of system by typing cd / (this is the U: drive)
Run the TAR extract command to restore all the file by typing
tar -xvf /storage/my_d.tar
tar the TAR program
-xvf the parameter: x is extract, v is verbose, f is file
/storage/my_d.tar location of the tar file, may be on your external HDD.
This will extract on to your root and should be to /d as your archive was done with a folder.
Fat32 filesystem
Fat32 filesystem differ from GEMDOS/TOS filesystem in that it contain long file names. To succesfully backup these files with long file names, we will need to use again the same unix archiving tool TAR.
To TAR the entire Fat32 filesystem
Open the unix command shell by running tcsh - double click on D:\BIN\TCSH
At the command prompt, move to Drive E: root by typing cd /e (assume Drive E: is Fat32)
Run the TAR command to archive all the file by typing tar -cvf my_e.tar /e
A file called my_e.tar will be created at the root of Drive E:, just copy this file over to the external hard disk.
You may choose to compress the file my_e.tar to save space.
To restore (UNTAR) the archived Fat32 filesystem
Open the unix command shell by running tcsh - double click the TCSH
At the command prompt, move to system root by typing cd / (this is the U: drive)
Run the TAR extract command to restore all the file by typing tar -xvf /storage/my_e.tar
Configuration Files Back Up
Taking a backup of the configuration files of Mint is the easiest method of backing up the Mint environment. Basically, there are only 2 files that is needed to be backup in. These 2 files are
MINT configuration file - MINT.CNF located at C:\MINT\<System Folder>\MINT.CNF
XaAES configuration file - XAAES.CNF located at C:\MINT\<System Folder>\XAAES.CNF
As this backup only 2 files, you will need to know what other important files to be backup. This may include other configuration files for your applications as well as your important data - stuff like your desktop configuration, taskbar configuration, your user specific data, etc etc. These other information are needed for complete restoration of the system. You will also need to know what applications is needed on the system.
Restoration of the system using these configuration files requires the total rebuild of the system. All applications referenced by the MINT.CNF and XAAES.CNF must be rebuild and available. All user specific data restoration must done. Only after rebuilding the OS system, installation of the applications and restoration of the end-user data, then only you copy your backed up MINT.CNF and XAAES.CNF overwritting the default files.
The recommended method of backup is Full Disk Back Up.
This is because entire local drive is copied to the backup storage and restoration is just a copy back to your local drive from the backup storage. All OS, OS settings, applications, application settings and end-user data are backup on the external storage. Restoration will be quicker - you do not have to reinstall the OS and applications.
See you at
WongCK
created: 17 Mar 2010