John Jason Jordan wrote: > I was going to give it a shot. I have 145 GB total to back up, and > my backup disk has over 300 GB available, so if it didn't work or I > can't figure out how to restore, I could just nuke it and go back to > rdiff-backup. But after reading the documentation again I think it is > not for me. > > I still can't figure out what Back in Time means by a "snapshot." I > know the difference between "full" and "incremental," and I understand > (and appreciate) the way rdiff-backup makes an incremental that looks > like a full backup by creating links to the previous full backup. With > rdiff-backup you can restore the latest version of a file, or any of > the older versions. The Back in Time documentation leads me to believe > it does the same thing. > > Thanks to Jim for the explanation of what the preconfigured exclude > settings mean. I guess I could just nuke them and add my own. I am still > surprised that it did not automatically exclude /proc, /media, /sys > and /tmp. After reading the documentation again I conclude that the > developers assumed that the user would only back up their ~/ folder. I > recall once a long time ago accidentally deleting /bin, so I want the > whole filesystem. > _______________________________________________ > PLUG mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug > >
John, Just for slaps, and giggles, I installed backintime, and gave it a test run. The application gives the user a simple way to revert changes to their files based on a point in time (Snapshot). It seems like it is useful as a document/file revision tool more than anything else, which explains their default choices for what to backup. (I had a real DUH! moment when I came to that conclusion, and looked at the title of the application again...) I suppose you could use it for system backups, but I think that (out-of-the-box) it isn't really designed for that purpose, and wouldn't be any better as a backup tool than the many other options, like the ones on this page: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BackupYourSystem My personal preference is to simply backup my user data, and restore it on a fresh installation when I bork my system (not if, WHEN). This way, I know I am starting clean... I do the same with Windows, too. When I restore my home folder, I move all of the regular files to my new home directory, but selectively restore the dot-files, and directories, as needed. -Jim P.S. Thanks for creating this conversation. You just reminded me that I need to get some backups going on this system. I have my /home folder on a separate partition, but that won't do me any good if the disk dies. _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
