[AuckLUG] Re: AuckLUG Digest, Vol 37, Issue 7
Alaric
um.167 at xtra.co.nz
Sat Jun 14 16:39:56 NZST 2008
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> Today's Topics:
>
> 1. Re: Backup (Johann Schoonees)
> 2. What to back up? (Johann Schoonees)
> 3. Re: What to back up? (Kiirani)
> 4. Backup (Alaric)
> 5. Re: Backup (Kiirani)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 13:24:43 +1200
> From: Johann Schoonees <j.schoonees at irl.cri.nz>
> Subject: [AuckLUG] Re: Backup
> To: aucklug at linux.net.nz
> Message-ID: <4851CC5B.7030407 at irl.cri.nz>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
>
> Liz Q wrote:
>> try looking at rdiff-backup
>> Though not overly automated and gui-ish
>>
>
> I'll endorse that. rdiff-backup keeps a current mirror of your
> filesystem plus backward differences, i.e. a kind of decremental
> back-up. Restoring a lost file is as simple as 'cp' (or drag'n'drop if
> you prefer the GUI). It seems to work like rsync in that it uses
> minimal bandwidth: great for backing up to slow external drives. If you
> like I can email you a simple script that's been running every night for
> years and has saved my bacon several times.
>
> Johann
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 13:37:58 +1200
> From: Johann Schoonees <j.schoonees at irl.cri.nz>
> Subject: [AuckLUG] What to back up?
> To: Auckland Linux User Group mailing list <aucklug at linux.net.nz>
> Message-ID: <4851CF76.6060606 at irl.cri.nz>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> On the topic of back-ups again, my backup-rdiff script backs up the
> world because I couldn't be bothered excluding things and the back-up
> disks seem to fill quite slowly. (From memory I exclude directories
> like /proc and a few others.)
>
> However, in the interest of learning, what root-level directories could
> one exclude safely in the knowledge that one would never need them in
> the event of catastrophic distro update or hard drive failure? /dev
> perhaps, or /tmp?
>
> I had a disk crash recently and used the opportunity to change distros.
> In the event only relatively few files from /home and /usr/local got
> restored from back-up, but I suppose having a good copy of directories
> like /etc might be a good idea? What's your favourite list?
>
> Johann
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:11:15 +1200
> From: Kiirani <kiirani at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [AuckLUG] What to back up?
> To: "Auckland Linux User Group mailing list" <aucklug at linux.net.nz>
> Message-ID:
> <2494ad260806122011l696d78a7jb46d773351136fdb at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
>> However, in the interest of learning, what root-level directories could one
>> exclude safely in the knowledge that one would never need them in the event
>> of catastrophic distro update or hard drive failure? /dev perhaps, or /tmp?
>
> For me personally, /home, /var and /etc are the only majorly important
> things. /home and /etc are obvious, config files and all personal
> files. /var I like to keep because this machine runs apache, mysql
> etc, so a lot of important stuff which I can't be bothered backing up
> separately is in there. Those are the things I include for my daily
> rdiff-backup.
>
> As I'm not backing up /usr, and I use gentoo, I also exclude
> /var/lib/portage and /var/db/pkg - last time I tried to restore those
> to a new system it caused hell with my package manager.
>
> Otherwise, when doing a *full* backup (including package manager and
> installed programs), I've found that /proc /sys and possibly /dev
> cause problems if you try to back them up while the system's running,
> and anyway they should be filled automatically. /tmp, /var/tmp and
> /usr/tmp are definitely unneccessary, and I also like to exclude the
> sources portage uses to build packages, because they're huge and can
> be re-fetched. Under other systems, there are probably .bin files or
> something that aren't needed after installation that you could
> exclude. I'm not really sure as I haven't poked at my debian properly
> yet.
> You can probably exclude /usr/src as well, depends how attached to
> your kernel sources you are.
>
> You definitely shouldn't NEED /sys, /proc, /dev, or /tmp to run the
> system. Well, you might need to make the directories, I don't really
> remember my last gentoo install, my system's quite stable now.. I
> think udev automatically fills /dev up on startup.
>
> My list in python form :
> includes = {}
> excludes = {}
>
> # Things to include
> includes['daily'] = [
> '/home',
> '/var',
> '/etc'
> ]
> includes['weekly'] = [
> '/'
> ]
> includes['monthly'] = [
> '/'
> ]
>
> # Things to exclude, must take precedence.
> excludes['all'] = [
> '/var/tmp',
> '/tmp',
> '/usr/tmp',
> '/sys',
> '/mnt',
> '/proc'
> ]
> excludes['daily'] = [
> '/var/lib/portage',
> '/var/db/pkg'
> ]
> excludes['weekly'] = [
> '/usr/portage/distfiles'
> ]
> excludes['monthly'] = []
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 20:25:14 +1200
> From: Alaric <um.167 at xtra.co.nz>
> Subject: [AuckLUG] Backup
> To: aucklug at linux.net.nz
> Message-ID: <48522EEA.7040805 at xtra.co.nz>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> Thanks everyone. I will try them all. Sorry if this is the wrong way
> to reply but the only time I tried to add a cooment to the dooings I got
> told off for doing the wrong thing. I can write emails, open emails and
> forward emails but that is about the limit of my experience.
>
> Alaric
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 23:58:03 +1200
> From: Kiirani <kiirani at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [AuckLUG] Backup
> To: "Auckland Linux User Group mailing list" <aucklug at linux.net.nz>
> Message-ID:
> <2494ad260806130458h14eb3c80o4cd58902b25c814f at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> Have you tried the reply button? There should be one somewhere...
>
> 2008/6/13 Alaric <um.167 at xtra.co.nz>:
>> Thanks everyone. I will try them all. Sorry if this is the wrong way to
>> reply but the only time I tried to add a cooment to the dooings I got told
>> off for doing the wrong thing. I can write emails, open emails and forward
>> emails but that is about the limit of my experience.
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
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> End of AuckLUG Digest, Vol 37, Issue 7
> **************************************
>
Thanks again. Yes, Johann, I would like the script. I can write them
but it is always easier if someone else has done it first. Yes, I know
about the reply button. It was using that that got me into trouble.
Apaparently I ought to have edited out some of the previous entries.
Alaric
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