Provided by: fsarchiver_0.6.22-1_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)