1FSARCHIVER(8) System Manager's Manual FSARCHIVER(8)
2
6 fsarchiver - filesystem archiver
7
10 fsarchiver is a system tool that allows you to save the contents of a
11 filesystem to a compressed archive file. The file-system can be
12 restored on a partition which has a different size and it can be
13 restored on a different file-system. Unlike tar/dar, FSArchiver also
14 creates the filesystem when it extracts the data to partitions. Every‐
15 thing is checksummed in the archive in order to protect the data. If
16 the archive is corrupt, you just lose the current file, not the whole
17 archive.
18
21 Official project homepage:
22 http://www.fsarchiver.org
23 Quick Start Guide:
25 http://www.fsarchiver.org/QuickStart
26 Forums where to ask questions:
28 http://www.fsarchiver.org/forums/
29 Report a bug:
31 http://www.fsarchiver.org/forums/viewforum.php?f=17
32
35 fsarchiver [ options ] savefs archive filesystem ...
36 fsarchiver [ options ] restfs archive id=n,dest=filesys‐
38 tem[,mkfs=fstype] ...
39 fsarchiver [ options ] savedir archive directory ...
41 fsarchiver [ options ] restdir archive destination
43 fsarchiver [ options ] archinfo archive
45 fsarchiver [ options ] probe [detailed]
47
50 savefs Save filesystems to archive.
51 restfs Restore filesystems from archive. This overwrites the existing
53 data on filesystems. Zero-based index n indicates the part of
54 the archive to restore. Optionally, a filesystem may be con‐
55 verted to fstype.
56 savedir
58 Save directories to archive (similar to a compressed tarball).
59 restdir
61 Restore data from archive which is not based on a filesystem to
62 destination.
63 archinfo
65 Show information about an existing archive file and its con‐
66 tents.
67 probe Show list of filesystems detected on the disks.
69
74 -h, --help
75 Show help and information about how to use fsarchiver with exam‐
76 ples.
77 -V, --version
79 Show program version and exit.
80 -v, --verbose
82 Verbose mode (can be used several times to increase the level of
83 details). The details will be printed to the console.
84 -o, --overwrite
86 Overwrite the archive if it already exists instead of failing.
87 -d, --debug
89 Debug mode (can be used several times to increase the level of
90 details). The details will be written in
91 /var/log/fsarchiver.log.
92 -A, --allow-rw-mounted
94 Allow to save a filesystem which is mounted in read-write (live
95 backup). By default fsarchiver fails with an error if the par‐
96 tition if mounted in read-write mode which allows modifications
97 to be done on the filesystem during the backup. Modifications
98 can drive to inconsistencies in the backup. Using lvm snapshots
99 is the recommended way to make backups since it will provide
100 consistency, but it is only available for filesystems which are
101 on LVM logical-volumes.
102 -a, --allow-no-acl-xattr
104 Allow to run savefs when partition is mounted without the
105 acl/xattr options. By default fsarchiver fails with an error if
106 the partition is mounted in such a way that the ACL and
107 Extended-Attributes are not readable. These attributes would not
108 be saved and then such attributes could be lost. If you know
109 what you don't need ACL and Extended-Attributes to be preserved
110 then it's safe to run fsarchiver with that option.
111 -e pattern, --exclude=pattern
113 Exclude files and directories that match that pattern. The pat‐
114 tern can contains shell asterisks such as * and ?, and the pat‐
115 tern may be either a simple file/dir name or an absolute
116 file/dir path. You must use quotes around the pattern each time
117 you use wildcards, else it would be interpreted by the shell.
118 The wildcards must be interpreted by fsarchiver. See examples
119 below for more details about this option.
120 -L label, --label=label
122 Set the label of the archive: it's just a comment about the con‐
123 tents. It can be used to remember a particular thing about the
124 archive or the state of the filesystem for instance.
125 -z level, --compress=level
127 Valid compression levels are between 1 (very fast) and 9 (very
128 good). The memory requirement increases a lot with the best
129 compression levels, and it's multiplied by the number of com‐
130 pression threads (option -j). Level 9 is considered as an
131 extreme compression level and requires an huge amount of memory
132 to run. For more details please read this page:
133 http://www.fsarchiver.org/Compression
134 -s mbsize, --split=mbsize
136 Split the archive into several files of mbsize megabytes each.
137 -j count, --jobs=count
139 Create more than one compression thread. Useful on multi-core
140 CPUs. By default fsarchiver will only use one compression
141 thread (-j 1) and then only one logical processor will be used
142 for compression. You should use that option if you have a
143 multi-core CPU or more than one physical CPU on your computer.
144 The typical way to use this option is to specify the number of
145 logical processors available so that all the processing power is
146 used to compress the archive very quickly. You may also want to
147 use all the logical processors but one for that task so that the
148 system stays responsive for other applications.
149 -c password, --cryptpass=password
151 Encrypt/decrypt data in archive. Password length: 6 to 64 chars.
152 You can either provide a real password or a dash ("-c -") with
153 this option if you do not want to provide the password in the
154 command line and you want to be prompted for a password in the
155 terminal instead.
156
159 save only one filesystem (/dev/sda1) to an archive:
160 fsarchiver savefs /data/myarchive1.fsa /dev/sda1
161 save two filesystems (/dev/sda1 and /dev/sdb1) to an archive:
163 fsarchiver savefs /data/myarchive2.fsa /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1
164 restore the first filesystem from an archive (first = number 0):
166 fsarchiver restfs /data/myarchive2.fsa id=0,dest=/dev/sda1
167 restore the second filesystem from an archive (second = number 1):
169 fsarchiver restfs /data/myarchive2.fsa id=1,dest=/dev/sdb1
170 restore two filesystems from an archive (number 0 and 1):
172 fsarchiver restfs /data/arch2.fsa id=0,dest=/dev/sda1
173 id=1,dest=/dev/sdb1
174 restore a filesystem from an archive and convert it to reiserfs:
176 fsarchiver restfs /data/myarchive1.fsa id=0,dest=/dev/sda1,mkfs=reis‐
177 erfs
178 save the contents of /usr/src/linux to an archive (similar to tar):
180 fsarchiver savedir /data/linux-sources.fsa /usr/src/linux
181 save a /dev/sda1 to an archive split into volumes of 680MB:
183 fsarchiver savefs -s 680 /data/myarchive1.fsa /dev/sda1
184 save a filesystem and exclude all files/dirs called 'pagefile.*'
186 fsarchiver savefs /data/myarchive.fsa /dev/sda1 --exclude='pagefile.*'
187 exclude 'share' in both '/usr/share' and '/usr/local/share':
189 fsarchiver savefs /data/myarchive.fsa --exclude=share
190 absolute exclude valid for '/usr/share' but not '/usr/local/share'
192 fsarchiver savefs /data/myarchive.fsa --exclude=/usr/share
193 save a filesystem (/dev/sda1) to an encrypted archive:
195 fsarchiver savefs -c mypassword /data/myarchive1.fsa /dev/sda1
196 extract an archive made of simple files to /tmp/extract:
198 fsarchiver restdir /data/linux-sources.fsa /tmp/extract
199 show information about an archive and its file systems:
201 fsarchiver archinfo /data/myarchive2.fsa
202
205 fsarchiver is still in development, don't use it for critical data yet.
206
209 fsarchiver was written by Francois Dupoux. It is released under the
210 GPL2 (GNU General Public License version 2). This manpage was written
211 by Ilya Barygin and Francois Dupoux.
212 30 December 2009 FSARCHIVER(8)