On Wed, 2008-03-12 at 22:48 -0500, forgottenwizard wrote: > On 11:18 Thu 13 Mar , Iain Buchanan wrote: > > > > On Tue, 2008-03-11 at 23:10 -0500, forgottenwizard wrote: > > > > define "unneeded". This is highly system dependant, as everyone puts > > important files all over the place. > > > Things I would lose if I backed them up.
meh? "uneeded" = "things I would lose if I backed them up"?... Isn't the idea of a backup so that you don't lose things? I'm confused. > Doing a prior backup, some > files in /proc caused me problems, and rsync refused to delete anything > in the following pass. ah, do you want to backup your data files only (documents, music, etc)? then you can ignore /proc /dev and /sys. I thought you wanted to back up the bootability of the system (in case a disk was corrupted, or you unmerged python, eg.) so that you wouldn't have to stuff around fixing it, as well as restoring your files. > > I'd say you _need_ /dev /proc and /sys. > I'd like to know why. Some of the files in /proc change often, and cause > rsync a problem. sys doesn't cause these problems, though. Is this why you're asking? Because you got some rsync errors from trying to copy /proc? You can safely ignore /proc! > > If you _really_ want to know for sure, turn on the atimes option in > > fstab for all your partions, then reboot and do a bit of stuff (log in, > > ssh, etc). Then use `find` to find all files that were accessed. > > Something like this: > > > > * edit /etc/fstab, delete noatime (replacing it with "defaults" if > > no other options remain) > > * $ touch /var/tmp/reference > > * $ shutdown -r now > > * log in, look around > > * find / -anewer /var/tmp/reference > > > > The output from the last command will be everything you _need_ to boot. > > > > Ideally, when backing up /proc /dev and /sys, do so from a cleanly > > shut-down system. > > > > HTH, > > I'm trying to do this with the system booted up, because doing a daily > sync like that would be a bit of a pain. again see above. You would only have to do that infrequently to see what was needed, but reading your reply, I don't think that's what you want... If you want to back up certain data, just explicitly backup that data. If you want to back up the entire system, then you need to backup the entire system! If you exclude /proc you won't loose any data, and your system will still boot if /proc is empty to begin with (I think). HTH a bit more! -- Iain Buchanan <iaindb at netspace dot net dot au> What has roots as nobody sees, Is taller than trees, Up, up it goes, And yet never grows? -- [email protected] mailing list
