Other Help Topics :: Where I am at with DSL now

Yes, you can boot and run from the live cd and backup and restore files that you want. When you boot from the live cd you can tell the boot program how you want dsl to start by using the cheat codes. I assume you understand that part. If not let me know. Then once the program is installed and running, you can go to >system>backup/restore and have dsl save files which you have designated in the file /home/dsl/.filetool.lst Look at that file and make whatever adjustments you want. Since backup saves the .filetool.lst file you are set. Where you backup is important. When you select backup/restore a window opens and you enter the path of where the backup goes. If you fail to enter a "real" location, backup uses the ramdisk which goes away during a reboot.
Hope this helps
--Ted

Quote (tedmoore99 @ June 18 2006,20:58)

Hi,

1)When, where and how do I find and tell the boot program how I want dsl to start? What is the boot program? What/where are the cheat codes?

2) How exactly do I go to system backup restore? How do I have dsl save files I want to designate in the filetool.lst? Will this automatically include e-mail, installed programs, program settings, files, etc?

3) How do I know where to backup? How do I choose where to backup? Does it have to be on a particular partition in dsl of a particular type etc on the hdd? If so, what does the hdd partition type need to be? How do I know the path of the hdd partition in order to put it in?

D.

I might chime in if you like.

Those seem like a lotta questions, but none of it is hard.

1) When you first boot dsl from a livecd you will see a prompt at the bottom of that first screen.
That is called the "boot prompt".
In my case I have a backup on hda9, I want dma acceleration on my drives, I usually don't run swap, and I run entirely from ram, so I type this here:

Code Sample

dsl dma toram noswap restore=hda9

Read the first screen carefully - it lists "boot parameters", which are things like dma, toram etc.

2) OK. Once dsl has booted, right-click on the desktop --> system -->backup/restore

A little gui opens. Enter the device (drive) name where you want your backup to go. In my case I enter hda9 (*not* /dev/hda9 - you don't enter a path). Click OK.

Open this gui again, you'll notice it has remembered this setting.

Now open the file /home/dsl/.filetool.lst in emelfm with the edit button. Add any files/directories you specifically want backed up to the list there. You only need to list a path/to/directory to have all files in that dir backed up.

If you want to exclude certain files within a dir listed in filetool.lst, then you can add a unique word in its path (usually the basename) to /home/dsl/.xfiletool.lst

You don't need to add the whole path to this exclude list - in fact tar will use shell globbing to expand this and exclude all filenames containing that word from your backup. For example,
if I add a single word line

Code Sample

cache

to .xfiletool.lst, all files containing the word cache in their filenames will get excluded.

If I add a wildcard after it:

Code Sample

cache*

then all filenames containing words like cache1 or cachewhatever will also get excluded. Note this is case sensitive so filenames containing Cache would not get excluded.
But that's more info than you probably need.

3) You can pick any ext2, ext3, fat32, vfat or similar partition to backup to. Don't choose an ntfs (eg usual WinXP or Win2000) partition - writing to one of those from dsl is a bad idea (but you can read them). Pick somewhere with enough space for your backup. You can keep largish backups but it's not a great idea - for one thing, it will be slow to backup and restore. DSL's backup/restore is designed to keep your config files and such, not for 1GB of data. That's entirely possible, but it's slow.

Now shutdown from the right-click menu. The dirs/files you have listed in .filetool.lst should now get backed up to the partition you have set in a "tarball" ie a file with the ending tar.gz

When you reboot, enter the name of you backup partition as above at the boot prompt. The backed-up files should all be there in then right places when booting finished.

original here.