Backup, what system files are *really* important?

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Thu, 2010-03-11 at 18:54 -0700, Craig White wrote:
> On Thu, 2010-03-11 at 20:13 -0430, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> > On Thu, 2010-03-11 at 18:29 -0600, Mike McCarty wrote:
> > > Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > I back up all of /etc and /usr/local. Also /opt if it exists.
> > > 
> > > Is /opt really likely to contain some configuration information
> > > that a reinstall wouldn't set up? ISTM that, if the system
> > > is "modern" enough to use /opt for its install, then its config
> > > would also be in /var. Not so?
> > 
> > /opt (and /usr/local) are likely to contain stuff that wasn't installed
> > via rpm or yum, thus needs to be preserved. That's all. YMMV.
> > 
> ----
> what about /var ?
> 
> /var/www/html
> /var/www/named
> /var/lib/dhcpd
> /var/lib/imap
> /var/cache/samba
> 
> come immediately to my mind

I don't run public services on my personal machine so much of that
doesn't matter to me. Plus anything with "cache" in its pathname is
excluded by my backup script as a matter of course.

I do back up /var/log though. You never know.

poc