Provided by: fsarchiver_0.6.19-1_amd64 
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. Everything 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=filesystem[,mkfs=fstype,mkfsopt=options] ...
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 converted
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 contents.
probe Show list of filesystems detected on the disks.
OPTIONS
-h, --help
Show help and information about how to use fsarchiver with examples.
-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 partition 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 pattern can contains shell asterisks
such as * and ?, and the pattern 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 contents. 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 compression
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=reiserfs
restore a filesystem from an archive and specify extra mkfs options:
fsarchiver restfs /data/myarchive1.fsa id=0,dest=/dev/sda1,mkfs=ext4,mkfsopt="-I 256"
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)