Marc Joliet wrote: > Am Freitag, 10. August 2018, 04:46:17 CEST schrieb Dale: >> Wols Lists wrote: >>> On 08/08/18 04:43, Dale wrote: >>>> Howdy, >>>> >>>> I just bought two external drive enclosures. One is sort of a spare but >>>> I do plan to do some backups on it, mostly pictures from my camera. In >>>> one of the enclosures I put a single 6TB drive that I found on ebay. It >>>> has about 7,000 hours on it so it should have some life left yet and it >>>> passed the smartctl tests. It is USB but it transfers fast. Now to >>>> some questions. I use rsync. Command looks something like rsync -auv >>>> /source/ /destination/. If I backup the config files in my home >>>> directory, should I also include the --delete option? If after a >>>> upgrade for example a config file is deleted, because it is no longer >>>> needed, or renamed, should the old file be removed or is there a reason >>>> to keep them on the backups? Adding the --delete option isn't a problem >>>> command wise BUT I wonder if it can cause a problem at some point. >>>> Thoughts on that. I plan to use the --delete option for videos since if >>>> I deleted one, it is likely broken or something. Biggest question is >>>> about config files. >>> May I suggest using btrfs for your backup drive? One MAJOR caveat - DO >>> NOT let the drive fill up - a combination of snapshots and drive-full >>> has been known (quite often) to trash the file system. But provided you >>> make sure it doesn't go above about 80% you should be fine. >>> >>> You can add an option to rsync such that it will back up "in place". In >>> other words, if only 1K is changed in a 1M file, it will overwrite that >>> 1K. So when you back up, the procedure is to take a snapshot, then run >>> rsync with both "in place" and "delete". >>> >>> This will give you the space economy of incremental backups, combined >>> with the utility of full backups - each snapshot is a full backup as of >>> that date, but each new snapshot only increases disk usage by the >>> changes since the last. And you reclaim space by deleting old snapshots. >> I did think about btrfs. I've read a lot of threads on here about >> people using it and it seems to have come a long ways and be pretty >> stable. Right now, I've got a lot going on and really don't have the >> time to sit down and read up on it and how it works or what all it can >> do. In all honesty, if my system were to crash later when I don't have >> so much going on, I'd like to move to btrfs for as much as possible of >> my system. > Yeah, it's a good idea to wait until you have time :) . And then migrate > piecemeal, not all at once. Following up on Wol's suggestion, I would start > with the backup drive, since you can exploit most of the features there > (well, > snapshots and compression, at least). Personally, I've had mostly good > experience with btrfs and enjoy its send/receive feature for full-system > incremental backups. > >> I suspect /boot would still have to be ext2 or something >> because of grub. > GRUB actually supports btrfs. However, on a UEFI system you will need a > FAT32 > file system for /boot, so I would argue that on a relatively recent system > the > issue is moot. >
Yea, time is even more limited now. My Mom is still in the hospital about a hour away. I'm not supposed to visit people there, and other places where a lot of sick people can be, but it's my Mom. I went twice. The morning after the second visit, I was at the Doctors office. Now I'm sick. Luckily, the meds are working. Thing is, I don't feel like messing with computer stuff right now. Even cooking a meal is not so interesting. I can't taste or smell anyway. So, it may be a while before I get the time to deal with any of this. I would likely not learn anything about a new file system even if I read it more than once. I'm even avoiding updates just to prevent anything from going sideways. I wonder, how many times will I proof and edit this email???? I thought I read Grub, the new version, supported more file systems. Still, just for safety, I'd likely still use ext2. There's a lot of new stuff out there. Just tons of options. Thanks. Dale :-) :-)
