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Get root access:
sudo su

To backup:
tar cvpzf backup.tgz --exclude=/proc --exclude=/lost+found --exclude=/backup.tgz --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/sys /

To restore:
tar xvpfz backup.tgz -C /

Source: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=35087

To backup on an other mount:
tar cvpzf /mnt/data/backup.tgz --exclude=/proc --exclude=/lost+found --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/sys /

Use DeltaCopy (as rsync server) on the Windows box:

http://www.aboutmyip.com/AboutMyXApp/DeltaCopy.jsp

You’ll need to open port TCT/873 in your windows firewall.

Note: To fix the accentuated characters issue in the filenames, you can replace the “Cygwin1.dll” in the DeltaCopy directory by a UTF-8 compliant Cygwin dll (http://www.okisoft.co.jp/esc/utf8-cygwin/). Then restart the service or reboot.

And here’s my bash script running on my Linux box (all the files are in a “backup-tools” directory):

#!/bin/bash

passwdfile=~ACCOUNT/backup-tools/passwd
excludefile=~ACCOUNT/backup-tools/exclude
options="--delete-after --recursive --exclude-from=$excludefile --human-readable --stats --times"

# This gives a  bored user something to watch
if [ "$1" = "--progress" ];
then
    options="$options --progress"
fi

echo "--starting--"

rsync OPTIONNALUSERNAME@SEVERADDRESS::DELTACOPYMODULENAME /WHERETOBACKUP --password-file=$passwdfile $options

echo "--done--"

Then I run it daily in the crontab (command “crontab -e”):

@daily ~ACCOUNT/backup-tools/rsync.sh | mail ACCOUNT -s "daily rsync result"

Ref: http://dailycupoftech.com/windows-backup-with-rsync-and-freenas/

1. Use the Ubuntu “alternate installer” disc
2. At the start menu press F4 and select “Install a commande-line system”
   
3. Complete the installation process
4. After add the gnome-core package and gdm:
   aptitude install gnome-core gdm

Voilà!

I am now installing Ubuntu without a swap partition and I use a swap file afterward.

Here’s the details from Ubuntu Swap FAQ:

Should I reinstall with more swap?

• Definitely no.
• With the 2.6 kernel, “a swap file is just as fast as a swap partition.”(Wikipedia:Paging, LKML).

How do I add more swap?

• Usually, people associate swap with a swap partition, maybe because they’ve been proposed to create a swap partition on install. In fact any file can be used as a swapping device, be it a partition or a conventional file. If you’re considering responsiveness, my advice: add more RAM. Swapping to a partition or a file won’t change anything.
• We will add more swap by adding a swap file.
• Adding more swap is a four-step process :
  • a- Creating a file the size you want.
  • b- Formatting that file to create a swapping device.
  • c- Adding the swap to the running system.
  • d- Making the change permanent.
• We will consider (as an example) a 512 M swap need.
• a- Creating a file the size you want :
  • We will create a /mnt/512M.swap swap file.
    sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/512M.swap bs=1M count=512
    • What is important here is count=512, which means we want our file to contain 512 blocks of bs=1M, which means block size = 1 MegaBytes.
    • Be careful *not* to do this dd of=/mnt/512M.swap bs=1M seek=512 count=0
      Though the file grows to 512M immediately,it will have holes that makes it unusable.
• b- Formatting that file to create a swapping device :
  sudo mkswap /mnt/512M.swap
• c- Adding the swap to the running system :
  sudo swapon /mnt/512M.swap
  • You can see with “cat /proc/meminfo” that your additionnal swap is now available.
• d- Making the change permanent :
  • edit your /etc/fstab:
    gksudo gedit /etc/fstab
  • and add this line at the end of the file:
    /mnt/512M.swap  none  swap  sw  0 0
  • save and reboot

Ref: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwapFaq