How to make an ISO copy of Linux-filesystem and user files of VPS Debian based?

Question

I have a Debian-Based VPS on some hosting. I want to migrate from it and i need to make a full copy of all Linux-filesystem (and installed packages) + all home directory with website files. And then pack/convert it to ISO image so that to use it on cloud hostings like Amazon.

The problem is that i have only ssh root access. Hosting support can't do that for me.

Another part of the question - is it possible to enlarge the Linux-filesystem by not re-installing it and using the free space of home directory?

Is it possible to do? I guess it is possible with rsync or something like that. Will my Mysql databes copy together with all other data?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

can able to install any of rpm to using your login and password if yes then you can install from following web site require rpm or tar http://www.mondorescue.org/ and simply run from console mondoarchive to create .iso !!

Answer 2

Essentially you want to make a full disk backup, where the storage is a .iso file. This is a bit unusual; as you mention, rsync is a more common tool for this. There's a number of backup tools in Debian that can do the job; surely one of them can export to .iso. Worst case scenario, use fuse (or mount loopback) to create a writable mount point backed by a .iso file. I'm not sure any of these solutions will create bootable backups though.

The problem with databases is generally that you need to take em down to get a consistent snapshot. If you're migrating servers that's not a problem, but when you're just making backups of a live server you generally don't want the availability hit. So you have the DB generate a dump file, configure the backup tool to skip all the database data expect the dump.

Answer 3

You can simplify your request a bit, as it's Debian based don't bother backing up packages, just store the output of dpkg --get-selections, which you can then get to take affect with dpkg --set-selections