Imaging a running Linux server

[blu-Z8efaSeK1ezqlBn2x/YWAg at public.gmane.org (Edward Ned Harvey)]

> From: discuss-bounces-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org [mailto:discuss-bounces-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org] On
> Behalf Of Chris O'Connell
> 
> I usually use Clonezilla for my imaging needs.  Sadly, Clonezilla is
> having
> some trouble with the hardware on one of my servers.  Ideally I
> wouldn't
> want to take my server down to image it anyways.
> 
> Can anyone recommend a tool to image a system while the system is up
> and
> running?

Dump.

I am aware of the downsides of dump.  Running it on a mounted filesystem,
there's no guarantee it can capture everything or maintain consistency
because the disk is changing, and things are buffered and being written to
disk which are still only in ram.  The same problem applies to all backup
tools that you can possibly use on ext fs.  If you can unmount, dump is your
best tool.  If you can't unmount, dump is still your best tool (unless you
want to exclude things, or do some other feature that dump can't do.)

This will all change one day, when BTRFS becomes stable.

Or just serve everything from a solaris NFS file server with ZFS, and the
whole thing becomes a non-issue.  ;-)