Re: recommended partitions to backup with dump

2022-08-24 Thread Geoff Steckel




On 8/24/22 13:28, Shadrock Uhuru wrote:

hi everyone
after losing a considerable amount of data that i had accumulated over 
the last year or so

by trying to remove a directory called '~' that i had created by mistake
in a sub directory of my home directory with rm -rf ~
which of course started to eat through my home directory with a vengence,
i managed to stop it before it went to far,
i didn't have any recent backups,
needless to say i've learning my lesson about having a good policy of 
regular backups.

what are the recommended partition to backup if

1 i want to do a fresh reinstall e.g. to move to a larger hard drive.
2 for a disaster recovery like what i experienced above.

i will be using ville walveranta's autodump 1.5a script
which does a full dump on sundays and incremental dumps during the week,
i already have /home /etc and /root set for backup,
are there any other partitions i should bear in mind ?

shadrock


I agree with "know exactly what you need" or "save everything"
If backups are cheap in time and money just save everything
as often as you can - daily if you do a lot online.
Rebuilding from incremental dumps can be painful.

Even if dumping everything I'd consider leaving out any directory
with "cache" in its name
That can potentially save many gigs of storage and hours of backup time.
Thunderbird and firefox usually have multiple gig databases.

If backups are expensive and you're being very, very selective, I'd add
to your list:

the output of pkg_info
/usr/local, /var/mail
potentially /usr/src, /var/www, /var/unbound, /var/nsd
any directories I added or I'm not sure about
any system directories where I've modified files

Any volumes not part of the base system have their own dump schedule.
hth
Geoff Steckel



Re: recommended partitions to backup with dump

2022-08-24 Thread Nick Holland

On 8/24/22 13:28, Shadrock Uhuru wrote:

hi everyone
after losing a considerable amount of data that i had accumulated over the last 
year or so
by trying to remove a directory called '~' that i had created by mistake
in a sub directory of my home directory with rm -rf ~
which of course started to eat through my home directory with a vengence,
i managed to stop it before it went to far,
i didn't have any recent backups,
needless to say i've learning my lesson about having a good policy of regular 
backups.
what are the recommended partition to backup if

1 i want to do a fresh reinstall e.g. to move to a larger hard drive.
2 for a disaster recovery like what i experienced above.

i will be using ville walveranta's autodump 1.5a script
which does a full dump on sundays and incremental dumps during the week,
i already have /home /etc and /root set for backup,
are there any other partitions i should bear in mind ?

shadrock



/root and /etc should be on the root partition ( / , sd0a, typically).
There is *generally* not much data of substance in the directory /root,
but that depends on your environment.

Also depending on your environment, there's often a lot of really important
stuff in /var.  Or not.  You may have local scripts hiding out in
/usr/local/*bin.

If you want a "Bare Metal" restoration, you really need everything.  I
kinda think of 'dump' as a bare-metal restoration tool, though it can
definitely restore individual files.

The real answer, though, is "you backup everything you need".  OpenBSD
installs are so small, the vast majority of your system is often so much
bigger, might as well just back up everything, or exclude things that are
more trouble than they are worth (/mnt, /tmp leap into mind).

After you establish your backup system, build and validate a new system
based on that backup, both a "fresh install" and a "unhappy event" case.

I'm rather a fan of "know where your important files are" and restore by
building a new system, installing the required applications, then copying
over the config files and the data directories.  Thus I tend to be partial
to rsync backups using the --link-dest option rather than dump(8)s of file
systems.  Both have their place, and they really aren't competitors.

I have a sample starting point rsync --link-dest script here:
  https://holland-consulting.net/scripts/ibs/

Nick.



Re: recommended partitions to backup with dump

2022-08-24 Thread Gökşin Akdeniz

Hello Shadrock

24.08.2022 20:28 tarihinde Shadrock Uhuru yazdı:



1 i want to do a fresh reinstall e.g. to move to a larger hard drive.
2 for a disaster recovery like what i experienced above.



These arguments will require a "full backup". It means backup all 
partitions, so you can migrate all data (which means both os and personal)


So you can restore it all ("as they were"). Incrementel backups require 
level 0 back up and restore process will require all incremental 
backsups in sequential so restoring process will recover everything 
properly.


My humble advice is running a full backup of all partitions regularly 
(aka bare metal backup). Time intervals depends on activities and policy.


Sincerely yours,


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Description: OpenPGP public key


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Re: recommended partitions to backup with dump

2022-08-24 Thread Luke A. Call
On 2022-08-24 12:51:16-0500, Allan Streib  wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 24, 2022, at 12:28, Shadrock Uhuru wrote:
> > i already have /home /etc and /root set for backup,
> > are there any other partitions i should bear in mind ?
> 
> I always backup /var

The above make sense to me also.
Exploring  man 7 hier  might also be interesting, and possibly seeing
what is on a newly installed system, and what is not.



Re: recommended partitions to backup with dump

2022-08-24 Thread Allan Streib
On Wed, Aug 24, 2022, at 12:28, Shadrock Uhuru wrote:

> i already have /home /etc and /root set for backup,
> are there any other partitions i should bear in mind ?

I always backup /var

Allan



recommended partitions to backup with dump

2022-08-24 Thread Shadrock Uhuru

hi everyone
after losing a considerable amount of data that i had accumulated over the last 
year or so
by trying to remove a directory called '~' that i had created by mistake
in a sub directory of my home directory with rm -rf ~
which of course started to eat through my home directory with a vengence,
i managed to stop it before it went to far,
i didn't have any recent backups,
needless to say i've learning my lesson about having a good policy of regular 
backups.
what are the recommended partition to backup if

1 i want to do a fresh reinstall e.g. to move to a larger hard drive.
2 for a disaster recovery like what i experienced above.

i will be using ville walveranta's autodump 1.5a script
which does a full dump on sundays and incremental dumps during the week,
i already have /home /etc and /root set for backup,
are there any other partitions i should bear in mind ?

shadrock