Wow okay I just did something really hackish. I can't believe it
worked... But then again, Linux is a beautiful operating system.

This should work on any Xen VPS which you don't have physical access
to, but I think* you do need access to the simulated "serial" console
which all VPS hosts should provide. (maybe even that's not necessary)

I'm posting for archive, reference, and potentially it might benefit
someone if it shows up in Google.

1. Make your normal tarball backups like this while your system is
still in good order:

tar cpzf mybackup.tar.gz --exclude=3D/tmp --exclude=3D/proc --exclude=3D/de=
v
--exclude=3D/run --exclude=3D/lost+found --exclude=3D/mnt --exclude=3D/sys
--exclude=3D/backups /

2. Store it somewhere safe like a backup server. I just use curl to
quickly upload it to the backup server via FTP.

curl -T mybackup.tar.gz ftp://uname:pwd@myserver/mydir/

3. Do something to cause a catastrophic failure. rm -rf /boot or whatever.

4. Go to your VPS control panel and reinstall a Linux distro, doesn't
really matter which one. I picked Ubuntu since it takes literally two
minutes to install and I can instantly SSH into it as well as download
anything necessary without having to spend time setting it up. It's
temporary anyway.

5. SSH into your fresh OS install, then download your backed up file.

cd /
curl ftp://uname:pwd@myserver/mydir/mybackup.tar.gz -o mybackup.tar.gz

6. Install busybox: apt-get install busybox

7. Prepare a temporary RAMdisk to chroot into:

mkdir /chroot

I winged this part, but the idea is the same for any system:
- 1. extract your /boot/initrd.img into /chroot to get a minimal
filesystem in there
- 2. copy /bin/busybox /chroot/ and /chroot/bin just to be safe
- 3. cd /chroot
- 4. chroot --install

8. Make a RAMdisk:

mkdir /ramdisk
chmod 777 /ramdisk
mount -t tmpfs -o size=3D30M tmpfs /ramdisk/

9. Copy everything from /chroot into /ramdisk

cp -rav /chroot/* /ramdisk/

10. Make sure /ramdisk has everything you need, and you didn't miss
any step, and has a functional busybox that has working tar and gzip
functions.

11. chroot into /ramdisk/ and prepare to restore:

chroot /ramdisk/ /bin/sh

- Find a way to mount the target hard drive somewhere in your chrooted
filesystem. I just mounted it to /tmp. I think I did something like
mount /dev/xvda1 /tmp

12. Now that your hard drive is mounted, delete all the unnecessary
old filesystem folders. Make sure not to delete your mybackup.tar.gz

13. Restore.

cd /tmp
tar xzpf mybackup.tar.gz

14. Reboot, potentially twice, and hope everything worked.

15. You should be able to SSH back into your original system you
backed up in step 1.
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