Am Mon, 20 Mar 2017 17:15:04 -0600 schrieb the...@sys-concept.com: > Besides standard "data" backup, if I was to plan for a disaster > recovery; what to include in a backup system if I was to rebuild a > new box? > > - /etc > - /var/lib/portage/world > - /usr/src/linux/.config > - /var/spool/fax/ (if needed) > - /var/www/localhost/htdocs/ (if needed) > - crontab (users and root) > > What else did I miss?
I simply backup everything. Because whatever you try not to miss, there's always something you're gonna miss in the disaster case. A very good application to do this space efficient is borgbackup, plus it's very fast. Otherwise, I'd also add /boot to the list, to have a working kernel to start with. BTW: Having kernel modules, this is not enough: Also backup /lib/modules. If you store crontab, you should also store home. So your list is incomplete by definition. Why store only partly user data? Looking at "fax", this suggest there may be lots of other location you may want to backup. Why not the whole spool folder? It contains the mail spool. Backups of part of a system are not backups at all. By definition. Part of a disaster recovery plan is also to have a working rescue system with all the tools to restore your backup (backup software, network access, access to backup storage, encryption keys). For me, storing .config, /etc, and var/lib/world is enough and just a starting point for building new systems from scratch. But rebuilding a system takes much more. So I simply do not bother with rebuilding the packages and then trying to implant data back into such a system, I simply also store the system installation itself. The system is not that big that it outweights the hassle of rebuilding the system and fiddling around with putting data back into different places of the system. Restoring/rebuilding system has taught me that the hard way. There's always configuration outside of /etc. There's always something your "backup" missed, which is hard to rebuild. Simple solution: backup everything. And then, one of the most important factors of "disaster recovery" is time: In a disaster, it is important to get the system back online as fast as possible. You're going to be under stress anyways in that case, so take every chance for mistakes out of the process right from the beginning: Making restore more complex only introduces mistakes. Follow the KISS principle. -- Regards, Kai Replies to list-only preferred.
