1 Topic by Patrick Verner

  • Patrick Verner
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  • Registered: 2006-08-01
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Topic: Create and restore file system images

This can be done with fsarchiver. People could use this to back-up an entire file system to a smaller compressed image before altering a partition. It's simple command line interface would make it easy to control through a GUI. GTK+ could easily supply the file save location and retrieval with the code that the gparted_details.htm uses.

This would be one step closer to making GParted the ultimate partition manager.

http://www.fsarchiver.org

Patrick Verner's Website

2 Reply by gedakc

  • gedakc
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Re: Create and restore file system images

Thank you for this suggestion.  It has been discussed with the developer of fsarchiver and is planned for a future release.

3 Reply by boogerlad (edited by boogerlad 2009-06-24 07:25:27)

  • boogerlad
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Re: Create and restore file system images

So in a future version of Gparted, you could say pick any partition, make a complete compressed image of it and save it to another partition or disk/cd for later restoration? Also, would it be a sector by sector copying with all the empty space and zeroes, or would it just be the information?

4 Reply by gedakc

  • gedakc
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Re: Create and restore file system images

boogerlad wrote:

So in a future version of Gparted, you could say pick any partition, make a complete compressed image of it and save it to another partition or disk/cd for later restoration?

Yes, that is the intention.

boogerlad wrote:

Also, would it be a sector by sector copying with all the empty space and zeroes, or would it just be the information?

GParted would use a free software tool, such as fsarchiver, to perform the image backup and restore.  As such the method used would not be handled by GParted.  You might wish to read up on fsarchiver to determine how this tool performs the image backup.

5 Reply by davidu

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Re: Create and restore file system images

gedakc wrote:

Thank you for this suggestion.  It has been discussed with the developer of fsarchiver and is planned for a future release.

gedakc wrote:
boogerlad wrote:

So in a future version of Gparted, you could say pick any partition, make a complete compressed image of it and save it to another partition or disk/cd for later restoration?

Yes, that is the intention.

boogerlad wrote:

Also, would it be a sector by sector copying with all the empty space and zeroes, or would it just be the information?

GParted would use a free software tool, such as fsarchiver, to perform the image backup and restore.  As such the method used would not be handled by GParted.  You might wish to read up on fsarchiver to determine how this tool performs the image backup.

Guys the above has been "discussed with the developer of fsarchiver" more than 3.5 years ago. Any good news in this subject? I can't wait for that "future release" ;-) Could you predict how long it may take for this feature to be implemented?

6 Reply by gedakc

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Re: Create and restore file system images

@davidu, it all comes down to time to support and implement features in GParted.  We have fixed many problems and added new features over the past few years.

Since backups will take a long time, we want to first enhance progress reporting in GParted.  This requires refactoring the GParted code.  See:
Bug 685740 - Refactor to use asynchronous command execution