making fc20 backup

[Rick Stevens]

On 07/11/2014 03:33 PM, Joe Zeff issued this missive:
> On 07/11/2014 03:21 PM, Jackson Byers wrote:
>> What I am still very uncertain :
>>
>> how to handle, ie backup,
>> dirs like
>> /dev, /proc, /sys, /srv
>> /media, /run
>
> Don't.  I'm not sure about /sys and /srv, but the rest are created by
> the system at boot, and all you would do by "restoring" them would be to
> fsck your system up completely.

I use this sort of thing to back up to a directory named after the
machine and the date located on a USB hard drive mounted at
/run/media/Rick/USBDrive/backups:

	rsync -avXA --exclude-from=/etc/skipdirs.rsync / 
/run/media/Rick/USBDrive/backups/`hostname`-`date +%d-%m-%Y-%T`

and where the contents of /etc/skipdirs.rsync is:

	/proc/*
	/sys/*
	/dev/*
	/media/*
	/run/media/*
	**/.cache/google-chrome/***
	**/.ccache/***

/proc, /sys and /dev are dynamically created at boot so backing them
up is sort of a bad idea (well, backing them up is OK but restoring them
would be bad).

I don't back up /run/media or /media simply because I don't want to
back up removable media--especially anything I'm backing up TO (circular
references anyone?) I also don't back up various caches (and it's
shocking how much of that cruft there is).

If you want, you can back up /srv. RHEL-related systems (RHEL, CentOS,
Fedora) generally don't use it. Some distros use it for the webroot,
e.g. /srv/www or or other "sharable" or "servable" content. It's not a
dynamically created filesystem like /proc or /sys or /dev. Your choice.

For what it's worth, I have also used MondoRescue and Clonezilla with
success if you need to restore to bare metal after a total meltdown.

Just a suggestion. Your mileage may vary.
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- Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer, AllDigital    ricks at alldigital.com -
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-     If you can't beat your computer at chess...try kickboxing!     -
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