Re: Backup Consensus?
On Wed, 29 Jan 2003 07:40, Pigeon wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 12:47:38AM +1100, bob parker wrote:
> > On Tue, 28 Jan 2003 10:22, Pigeon wrote:
> > > Couple of suggestions:
> > > - might be an idea to save /var as well
> > > - if you're into kernel customising, make sure you have a rescue
> > > kernel with built-in support for all your critical hardware (ie, not
> > > as modules). I NEARLY got caught without a kernel that would recognise
> > > my Initio 9100UW SCSI card, but managed to find one. (Phew!)
> > >
> > > Pigeon
> >
> > Thanks for the support. Re /var, I just did a du -h on it and mine comes
> > out at 1.1 gig! Any thoughts on what is essential and what is not?
>
> Well, I saved the whole thing precisely because I wasn't sure what is
> essential and what is not... There's a lot of stuff there about
> apt/dpkg configuration, most of which will be rebuilt when you
> reinstall packages, but you might need some of it if your system has a
> complex mix of packages from different sources/branches. All I
> specifically needed were /var/spool/mail/pigeon and
> /var/spool/exim/input/*.
>
> Depending on how frequently you make backups, /var/log/* might have
> useful stuff that might help you determine why you needed the backup.
>
> My /var is only 63Mb; I guess I'm not the sort of user to commemt on
> what might be essential when it's grown to 1.1 gig.
>
> Still, 1.1 gig should compress down to less than 700Mb, so it'll all
> go on one CD.
>
> (Related thought: Must make statically-linked rescue versions of tar,
> gzip, bzip2, fileutils...)
>
> Pigeon
You motivated me to have a good look at /var.
The mail spooler is no problem because I have kmail leaching it continually
so it gets caught in the backup of $USER.
var/log and htdig account for about 1/4 gig each and there are about a
gazillion or so news items. I think prudence might warrant saving the newer
logs at least. The rest is welcome to dissappear if it must.
The installed packages are at least listed in a file in $USER so they are
quite restorable from the install discs. How much bother that would be I do
not know. I'd love to be able to sort the installed package list by cd so I'd
have the minimum no of media changes on a reinstall.
I'm presently downloading Knoppix, I expect that it would do double duty as a
rescue disc.
Thanks
Bob
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