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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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CentOS 6.3 - Best backup / restore solution? (lemmy.world)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hello everyone!

My manager just brought to my attention that this organization has a CentOS 6.3 server - he didn't specify what it's hosting just yet but asked that I find a solution to do a full backup so that we may restore later onto bare metal with the option to migrate from CentOS to another Linux distro.

Has anyone had experience with backing up / restoring CentOS 6? And if you know what would be the best Linux distro to replace CentOS 6? Or even a step by step guide for both or either one?

Please and thanks in advance!

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Without knowing what was being hosted, the only surefire way would be pulling a complete disk image with cat or dd.

If you wanted to stay on a similar system, RHEL 9 would be a good option or one of its "as similar as possible" like AlmaLinux.

Other common distros for servers are Debian, Ubuntu server and Suse SLES/OpenSuse Leap.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Without knowing what was being hosted, the only surefire way would be pulling a complete disk image with cat or dd.

That's not surefire, unless you're doing it offline. If the data is in motion (like a database that's being updated), you will end up with an inconsistent or corrupt backup.

Surefire in that case would be something like an lvm snapshot.

If you wanted to stay on a similar system, RHEL 9 would be a good option or one of its “as similar as possible” like AlmaLinux.

No love for Rocky?

Also Oracle Linux is still free, and fully compatible with RHEL.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

No love here for Rocky or Oracle for that matter.

Alma is looking better and better all the time ( or RHEL if you can afford it ).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

What has Rocky done?

Also, I 100% understand not liking Oracle as a company, but anyone can use OEL freely without ever having to deal with Oracle the company, and it's a damn good RHEL substitute.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yep, that's the goal. A complete disk image. I'll do some research on the other distros you've recommended. I appreciate it!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Is there any reason to keep the existing set-up? If it's just one drive, you could replace it with another and install Alma or something fresh. Then you could copy over whatever config the old system had to get up and running again. You could swap to the old drive if you needed to revert. If you have a spare machine, you could stand up the fresh setup side-by-side with the old one before swapping over.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I have to sit down with my manager to get the full scope of work. I assume we would do a backup of the existing machine as a fallback. Then create another back up that would strictly be data and config to then restore onto a new Linux distro. But that's purely conjecture at this time.