system restore from a cron backup
Rick Stevens
ricks at nerd.com
Tue Dec 23 19:16:55 UTC 2008
Kevin Kempter wrote:
> Hi All;
>
> I've setup a cron backup script to backup my Fedora 10 laptop - mostly in case
> a new yum update breaks my system.
>
>
> I'm currently excluding /proc but when the rsync script hits the /sys
> directory I get lots of read errors like this:
>
> sys/module/vmmon/initstate
> rsync: read errors mapping "/sys/module/vmmon/initstate": No data available
> (61)
> sys/module/vmmon/refcnt
> rsync: read errors mapping "/sys/module/vmmon/refcnt": No data available (61)
> sys/module/vmmon/srcversion
> rsync: read errors mapping "/sys/module/vmmon/srcversion": No data available
> (61)
>
> Questions:
>
> - should I exclude /sys from my rsync backup ?
Yes, you should exclude /sys, /proc (they're created on the fly by
the kernel...they're not real directories) and /dev.
> - Is it safe to restore my system without restoring /proc and /sys ?
Yes, they're created by the kernel at boot time.
> - If I do need to restore can I simply do an rsync like this:
> rsync -va /backup-location /system-location
> (i.e. rsync -va /stage/backup/etc /etc)
>
> Will rsync overwrite the files say in /etc with the backed up files even if the
> current /etc files are newer than the backed up files.
Those last two questions are related. If you specify "-u" as well
("rsync -vau /stage/backup/etc /etc"), newer files on the receiver (/etc
in your cited case) won't be overwritten. If you're running SELinux,
have a looksee at the rsync_selinux man page, too.
> Here's my backup script if it helps:
> # cat run_rsync.sh
> #!/bin/bash
>
> for I in `cat dirlist`
> do
> echo "[$I]"
> echo "=========="
> rsync -av /${I} /stage/backup
> done
>
>
> and here's the dirlist file:
> # cat dirlist
> bin
> boot
> dev
> docs
> download
> etc
> home
> lib
> lib64
> lost+found
> media
> mnt
> opt
> root
> sbin
> selinux
> srv
> sys
> tmp
> usr
> var
>
>
>
> as always, thanks in advance...
If you have the space in your backup directory and you want to back up
the whole system, I'd just:
rsync -avu --exclude-from=/etc/backup-exclude / /stage/backup
and put the directories you DON'T want backed up in /etc/backup-exclude:
/sys
/proc
/dev
That's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer ricks at nerd.com -
- AIM/Skype: therps2 ICQ: 22643734 Yahoo: origrps2 -
- -
- "Yeah, but you're taking the universe out of context." -
----------------------------------------------------------------------
More information about the users
mailing list