On Thu, Jan 18, 2007 at 01:20:37PM -0600, Randall Smith wrote:
I've been looking at various backup strategies in the case I need to
quickly (within an hour or so) move to different hardware. I like
Linux-VServer because it makes the system mostly hardware agnostic, but
I only need a single instance. I got to thinking, how hard would it be
to isolate the hardware dependent portions of a system, and simply
backup and restore the hardware independent portions onto a new system
using rsync? Can someone shed some light on the subject? A thinks I'm
not clear on.
Yes, doing this with rsync is fine, but that is a bad idea.
The main reason it's a bad idea is the following use case:
1) You're backing up SourceMachine to DestMachine.
2) You back up a good copy of SourceMachine to DestMachine.
3) You mess up a file on SourceMachine.
4) You back up that file to DestMachine.
5) Only later do you notice that the file is messed up.
Consequently, the file is now messed up on both
SourceMachine and DestMachine, and you're hosed.
This is why rdiff-backup exists. rdiff-backup is the right
tool for the job you're looking to do.
As for which files are system-dependent: there will be lots
of scattered files all over the place that are, including
lots in /etc/X11 . However, isolating these one by one and
excluding them is probably not the best idea.
My approach would be to exclude wide swaths of directories
-- e.g., don't back up /sys, /proc, and /dev .