FSARCHIVER(8) FSARCHIVER(8) NAME fsarchiver - filesystem archiver DESCRIPTION fsarchiver is a system tool that allows you to save the contents of a filesystem to a compressed archive file. The file-system can be restored on a partition which has a different size and it can be restored on a different file-system. Unlike tar/dar, FSArchiver also creates the filesystem when it extracts the data to partitions. Every‐ thing is checksummed in the archive in order to protect the data. If the archive is corrupt, you just lose the current file, not the whole archive. LINKS Official project homepage: http://www.fsarchiver.org Quick Start Guide: http://www.fsarchiver.org/QuickStart Forums where to ask questions: http://www.fsarchiver.org/forums/ Report a bug: http://www.fsarchiver.org/forums/viewforum.php?f=17 SYNOPSIS fsarchiver [ options ] savefs archive filesystem ... fsarchiver [ options ] restfs archive id=n,dest=filesys‐ tem[,mkfs=fstype] ... fsarchiver [ options ] savedir archive directory ... fsarchiver [ options ] restdir archive destination fsarchiver [ options ] archinfo archive fsarchiver [ options ] probe [detailed] COMMANDS savefs Save filesystems to archive. restfs Restore filesystems from archive. This overwrites the existing data on filesystems. Zero-based index n indicates the part of the archive to restore. Optionally, a filesystem may be con‐ verted to fstype. savedir Save directories to archive (similar to a compressed tarball). restdir Restore data from archive which is not based on a filesystem to destination. archinfo Show information about an existing archive file and its con‐ tents. probe Show list of filesystems detected on the disks. OPTIONS -h, --help Show help and information about how to use fsarchiver with exam‐ ples. -V, --version Show program version and exit. -v, --verbose Verbose mode (can be used several times to increase the level of details). The details will be printed to the console. -o, --overwrite Overwrite the archive if it already exists instead of failing. -d, --debug Debug mode (can be used several times to increase the level of details). The details will be written in /var/log/fsarchiver.log. -A, --allow-rw-mounted Allow to save a filesystem which is mounted in read-write (live backup). By default fsarchiver fails with an error if the par‐ tition if mounted in read-write mode which allows modifications to be done on the filesystem during the backup. Modifications can drive to inconsistencies in the backup. Using lvm snapshots is the recommended way to make backups since it will provide consistency, but it is only available for filesystems which are on LVM logical-volumes. -a, --allow-no-acl-xattr Allow to run savefs when partition is mounted without the acl/xattr options. By default fsarchiver fails with an error if the partition is mounted in such a way that the ACL and Extended-Attributes are not readable. These attributes would not be saved and then such attributes could be lost. If you know what you don't need ACL and Extended-Attributes to be preserved then it's safe to run fsarchiver with that option. -e pattern, --exclude=pattern Exclude files and directories that match that pattern. The pat‐ tern can contains shell asterisks such as * and ?, and the pat‐ tern may be either a simple file/dir name or an absolute file/dir path. You must use quotes around the pattern each time you use wildcards, else it would be interpreted by the shell. The wildcards must be interpreted by fsarchiver. See examples below for more details about this option. -L label, --label=label Set the label of the archive: it's just a comment about the con‐ tents. It can be used to remember a particular thing about the archive or the state of the filesystem for instance. -z level, --compress=level Valid compression levels are between 1 (very fast) and 9 (very good). The memory requirement increases a lot with the best compression levels, and it's multiplied by the number of com‐ pression threads (option -j). Level 9 is considered as an extreme compression level and requires an huge amount of memory to run. For more details please read this page: http://www.fsarchiver.org/Compression -s mbsize, --split=mbsize Split the archive into several files of mbsize megabytes each. -j count, --jobs=count Create more than one compression thread. Useful on multi-core CPUs. By default fsarchiver will only use one compression thread (-j 1) and then only one logical processor will be used for compression. You should use that option if you have a multi-core CPU or more than one physical CPU on your computer. The typical way to use this option is to specify the number of logical processors available so that all the processing power is used to compress the archive very quickly. You may also want to use all the logical processors but one for that task so that the system stays responsive for other applications. -c password, --cryptpass=password Encrypt/decrypt data in archive. Password length: 6 to 64 chars. You can either provide a real password or a dash ("-c -") with this option if you do not want to provide the password in the command line and you want to be prompted for a password in the terminal instead. EXAMPLES save only one filesystem (/dev/sda1) to an archive: fsarchiver savefs /data/myarchive1.fsa /dev/sda1 save two filesystems (/dev/sda1 and /dev/sdb1) to an archive: fsarchiver savefs /data/myarchive2.fsa /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1 restore the first filesystem from an archive (first = number 0): fsarchiver restfs /data/myarchive2.fsa id=0,dest=/dev/sda1 restore the second filesystem from an archive (second = number 1): fsarchiver restfs /data/myarchive2.fsa id=1,dest=/dev/sdb1 restore two filesystems from an archive (number 0 and 1): fsarchiver restfs /data/arch2.fsa id=0,dest=/dev/sda1 id=1,dest=/dev/sdb1 restore a filesystem from an archive and convert it to reiserfs: fsarchiver restfs /data/myarchive1.fsa id=0,dest=/dev/sda1,mkfs=reis‐ erfs save the contents of /usr/src/linux to an archive (similar to tar): fsarchiver savedir /data/linux-sources.fsa /usr/src/linux save a /dev/sda1 to an archive split into volumes of 680MB: fsarchiver savefs -s 680 /data/myarchive1.fsa /dev/sda1 save a filesystem and exclude all files/dirs called 'pagefile.*' fsarchiver savefs /data/myarchive.fsa /dev/sda1 --exclude='pagefile.*' exclude 'share' in both '/usr/share' and '/usr/local/share': fsarchiver savefs /data/myarchive.fsa --exclude=share absolute exclude valid for '/usr/share' but not '/usr/local/share' fsarchiver savefs /data/myarchive.fsa --exclude=/usr/share save a filesystem (/dev/sda1) to an encrypted archive: fsarchiver savefs -c mypassword /data/myarchive1.fsa /dev/sda1 extract an archive made of simple files to /tmp/extract: fsarchiver restdir /data/linux-sources.fsa /tmp/extract show information about an archive and its file systems: fsarchiver archinfo /data/myarchive2.fsa WARNING fsarchiver is still in development, don't use it for critical data yet. AUTHOR fsarchiver was written by Francois Dupoux. It is released under the GPL2 (GNU General Public License version 2). This manpage was written by Ilya Barygin and Francois Dupoux. 30 December 2009 FSARCHIVER(8)