Backup Central

I have been an advocate of backups for a long time. In the MS Windows
world, I just backed up everything and let the Automatic Restoral System
sort it all out. However, now that I've migrated to Linux, I find myself
a little unsure of what should be backed up and what should not. I'm
running SuSE Linux 9.0 Professional. I am running a file server on the
same machine with two users. Currently, I'm using rdiff-backup to do a
daily backup of the home directory and my public files. My question is:

Is my current strategy sufficient? Should I be backing up other
directories? Should I just back up everything from / on down? Do you
have any suggestions for a better strategy?

Thanks for any assistance.

Don Henson

Here's my list of excluded directories:

Oh, and in case you're using Linux 2.6, add /sys to the list of excluded
directories.

--
Maik Schreiber * http://www.blizzy.de

GPG public key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x1F11D713
Key fingerprint: CF19 AFCE 6E3D 5443 9599 18B5 5640 1F11 D713

Is my current strategy sufficient?

Probably not, unless you don't care to re-install your machine(s) in case you
broke the operating system.

Should I be backing up other directories?

see above

Should I just back up everything from / on down?

Definitely not. I somehow recall that reading some files in /proc can be
dangerous. In any case, there's no need to backup that one, since it's
"created" by the kernel.

Here's my list of excluded directories:

/boot - I'd recompile the kernel from scratch
/dev - I use devfs; back it up when you don't
/lost+found - ext2/3-specific
/mnt - external mounted stuff
/proc
/root - there should be nothing in there anyway
/tmp
/usr/portage - Gentoo-specific
/usr/tmp
/var/lock - run-time lock files
/var/log - you may want to backup these
/var/run - run-time state data
/var/state - same
/var/tmp

--
Maik Schreiber * http://www.blizzy.de

GPG public key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x1F11D713
Key fingerprint: CF19 AFCE 6E3D 5443 9599 18B5 5640 1F11 D713

On Tue, 2004-04-27 at 09:48, Maik Schreiber wrote:
Here's my list of excluded directories:

Oh, and in case you're using Linux 2.6, add /sys to the list of excluded
directories.

--
Maik Schreiber * http://www.blizzy.de

Thanks for responding but the wording of your post (above) seems to
indicate that there is another post containing your list of excluded
directories. I have no such message. Did you post two messages or am I
missing something?

Don Henson

Did you post two messages or am I missing something?

Yes, I did post two messages. I got both of them back from the list, too, so
it seems to work for me.

--
Maik Schreiber * http://www.blizzy.de

GPG public key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x1F11D713
Key fingerprint: CF19 AFCE 6E3D 5443 9599 18B5 5640 1F11 D713

Thanks. That looks like a good list. (Sorry about the confusion over the missing e-mail.)

Don Henson

On Tue, 2004-04-27 at 09:43, Maik Schreiber wrote: > Is my current strategy sufficient?

Probably not, unless you don't care to re-install your machine(s) in case you
broke the operating system.

Should I be backing up other directories?

see above

Should I just back up everything from / on down?

Definitely not. I somehow recall that reading some files in /proc can be
dangerous. In any case, there's no need to backup that one, since it's
"created" by the kernel.

Here's my list of excluded directories:

/boot - I'd recompile the kernel from scratch
/dev - I use devfs; back it up when you don't
/lost+found - ext2/3-specific
/mnt - external mounted stuff
/proc
/root - there should be nothing in there anyway
/tmp
/usr/portage - Gentoo-specific
/usr/tmp
/var/lock - run-time lock files
/var/log - you may want to backup these
/var/run - run-time state data
/var/state - same
/var/tmp

--
Maik Schreiber * http://www.blizzy.de

GPG public key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x1F11D713
Key fingerprint: CF19 AFCE 6E3D 5443 9599 18B5 5640 1F11 D713 _______________________________________________
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