Michael M. Moore wrote: > On Tue, 2009-06-02 at 08:18 -0700, Bruce KIlpatrick wrote: >> The only error I see in the log file at this point is a permission >> denied at /home/robin/.config/menus so adding an --exclude would not be >> a problem. >> >> After thinking about this a little more...besides wanting to "learn to >> do this correctly", I am interested in what is really important to >> save...email, browser, documents, pictures, etc...without having to >> create a huge list of folders to include or exclude. At this point it >> is a 6 GB file that is saved, so not really a storage issue, yet. > > I think the issue with backups is that there isn't necessarily a "learn > to do this correctly" that applies across the board. It really depends > upon the purpose of the backup, on what you want it to accomplish, on > what you want to save and for how long, and on what you want to be able > to restore and under what circumstances. > > I use [1] rdiff-backup, which uses (via rdiff) the rsync algorithm to > create and maintain a backup mirror of whatever file system(s) you tell > it to backup. To quote Wikipedia, "rdiff-backup stores incremental > rdiff deltas with the backup, with which it is possible to recreate any > backup point." That's a snippet of the technical stuff, but what I like > about it is that, most of the time, I just want to find an "oops, I > didn't mean to delete that" file. It's easy with the backup created by > rdiff-backup, since it is just a mirror of your data, so the file is > right where it was before I deleted it. Sometimes, I've wanted to > restore a previous version of a file that I've hopeless screwed up -- > also easy enough with rdiff-backup, since all backups are time-stamped. > Only once have I done a complete restore of my whole backed-up file > system -- more complicated, but doable. So it suits my needs really > well, but you may have different needs. > > As for what to backup, since I run it from a cron every night, I have > built up a list of home sub-directories to exclude. Basically, > everything I have no need to restore, like ~/.thumbnails, > ~/local/share/Trash, and my browsers' caches. I have only one file in > my user's home not owned by my user account: ~/.viminfo. So I exclude > that, too, so I don't have to sudo to run the job or get the "permission > denied" error in my logs. Since there are precious few files outside of > home I make changes to, I just copy them over to ~/Documents, so I have > a record of my changes. (In my case, it's mostly to do with > configuration odds & ends for various programs, including apt.) I don't > backup /etc, /usr, or /var. If I made more extensive use of /usr/local, > I guess I would add that to my backups. Basically, my goals are: 1) > data preservation of my own stuff, and 2) recreation of my settings and > system modifications should I ever need to reinstall, whether > "expectedly" or unexpectedly. > > I take care of things like my address book, bookmarks, and my installed > software list by periodically exporting them to files in ~/Documents, > which then get included in my backups. Gmail/IMAP preserves all the > email I want to keep and makes it readily accessible, but really > important email I also save to a file just in case Google blows up one > day. (Works for me because I don't have all that much *really > important* email.) > > But all this would be entirely inadequate for people running more > complex systems, set-ups, and software. So it's not the correct way to > manage backups, it's just the way that works for me. I think what you > have to decide is what do you want from your backup, then figure out > what sort of backup will be adequate to your needs. That's about as > close as you can come to learning to do it correctly. > > [1] http://rdiff-backup.nongnu.org/ > Thank you Michael.
This is a better explanation of "backup" than I have found so far. I will do some more thinking as to what I am interested in preserving. We don't have any technical setups here. Your ideas about exporting to files has me thinking. Your reasons gave words to what I had been realizing were my goals in this endeavor. On to the rdiff-backup.nongnu.org pages! _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
