LBackup is not designed for performing bootable Mac OS X system backups. If you are interested in performing a bootable backup of Mac OS X system, then please consider Carbon Copy Cloner, SuperDuper or Clonezilla.

With that out of the way, by using the post script feature of LBackup, it should be possible to create bootable backups. Mike Bombich has written up a great document outlining the various aspects of “creating a bootable backup of Mac OS X”.

With this information you should have no problem creating a bootable backup with Carbon Copy Cloner or a post script so that the backup created by LBackup is bootable.

If you do create a script to do this and it works, please consider contributing this to the LBackup project.

Should you wish to preform a full system backup or if you just want to backup everything in the the root directory using LBackup, you must be aware that there are certain directories which you will not be backed up by LBackup. For example many items in '/dev' directory will not be successfully copied by LBackup. If you wish to created a full system backup then you will need to use a pre or post script to ensure that these items are copied correctly.

If you have set the 'backupSource' to the root directory '/', then it is recommended that you first exclude all directories and files. Then remove any files or directories which you would like to include in you backup by removing the associated entry from your backup excludes file.

If you are backing up a standard Mac OS 10.5.2 install, then using the copying the example excludes file below should not result in nothing being backed up, provided you you have the 'backupSource=/' in your LBackup configuration file and you do not have any other files or directories in your root directory.

/Applications
/Developer
/Library
/System
/Network
/Users
/Volumes
/dev
/net
/home
/.Spotlight-V100
/etc
/var
/tmp
/bin
/cores
/mach_kernel
/mach_kernel.ctfsys
/private
/sbin
/usr
/.vol
/.hotfiles.btree
/.fseventsd
/.com.apple.timemachine.supported
/.Trashes
/.DS_Store
/lbackup

Below is an incomplete list of utilities which may be used to create full system backups.

• PartImage is a great utility which is similar to DD but will not copy the blank portions of a partition.
• Mondo is a utility which is able to perform full partition backups.
• FOG is a free cloning solution with a web based interface.
• Clonezilla is a free version of Ghost.
• g4l, or Ghost for Linux is a free version of Ghost.

Clonezilla Live is a bootable CD-ROM (.iso) which will allow you to boot a system and then make a full backup via SSH. In addition, Clonezilla leverages a variety of tools and provides a wide range of backup options. Clonezilla supports a number of operating systems and file systems.

If your system is virtualized then performing a full system backup, may be as simple as perfuming a copy of the virtual disk image. If you are interested to learn more about virtualization, contact Lucid Information Systems.

• Full System Backup with rsync
• Advanced use of the excludes file