On Fri, 2003-05-02 at 11:39, Michael Kahle wrote: > I just recently inherited a DLT1 tape drive from a friend! :) I ordered 4 > DLT tapes and a cleaning tape. I have downloaded and installed Arkeia to > use as my backup software. My question for all is what should I backup? Or > perhaps more importantly what shouldn't I bother backing up? I have a ton > of data on this machine, but a small percentage of it changes frequently. > > What I would like is advice on what things could I skip backing up? I want > to do a rotation like the following: > Week1: Full backup first day, incremental the rest of the days. > Week2: Full backup first day, incremental the rest of the days. > [...] > > I know that /proc is not necessary to back up, but what else? I want to use > as little tape as possible (these tapes are expensive) and backup only what > is necessary to restore the machine to the state it was in before the crash. > I also want the data on the tape in case I delete something accidentally. > > Thanks for your time. > > Michael Backup data, obviously, including all of /home, all of /lib, /boot, /etc, but if your bandwidth is good enough, install your software from current packages rather than tying up tape - meaning that you should archive an up-to-date dpkg --get-selections with the rest being saved. Do remember /opt and /usr/local, however, most of /usr can likely be skipped. /bin and /sbin are dependent on how you anticipate recovering the system when you need to restore - if you have a boot floppy/cd system to bootstrap the tape restoration, then you may not need to worry, but for situations where the system has crashed to unbootability (look that up in your Funk & Wagnalls!) I suspect that a base install from either cd or lan would restore that code before moving on to the rest of your system from tape, then to be upgraded with a dpkg --set selections. -- Mark L. Kahnt, FLMI/M, ALHC, HIA, AIAA, ACS, MHP ML Kahnt New Markets Consulting Tel: (613) 531-8684 / (613) 539-0935 Email: kahnt@hosehead.dyndns.org
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