Tar
Another approach is using tar and excluding some dirs, you could do it like this:Create a file /tmp/excludes.excl with these contents:
.bash_history /dev/* /mnt/* /tmp/* /proc/* /sys/* /usr/src/*
Then create the tar. But remember, when the system is 'not' using udev, you have to look into /proc/ after creating your container because some devices might not exist. (/dev/ptmx or others)
# tar --numeric-owner -cjpf /tmp/mysystem.tar.bz2 / -X /tmp/excludes.excl
Naturally, you can only do this when the critical services (MySQL, apache, ..) are stopped and your /tmp filesystem is big enough to contain your tar.
