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Re:

On 2020-04-23 17:52, Default User wrote:


Thanks to all for the information.

I may just stay with what I have, for now. If it ain't broke, don't fix it?


I would not make any changes because of the smartclt reports.



BTW, aside from neglecting to put a subject line in the original post, l
should have mentioned that both the root and home partitions are regular
ext4 (no lvm or encryption).

And by BIOS booting, I meant using a traditional mbr, not gpt. And I use
grub2, not lilo or anything else.

May I ask one additional question?
I back up my home partition only, because:

1)  I figure that I always reinstall the system from scratch, and either
re-attach the home partition, or add back the data from it bit by bit if
re-attaching the home partition doesn't work (well).

2)  Years ago, I tried to back up my whole system using rsync.  That
created a bizarre, seemingly recursive monstrosity which ended only when
the entire drive was filled.  I never forgot that.
Without seeing the exact command issued, it would be hard to figure out. But, I do use the -x (--one-file-system) option when invoking rsync(1) to prevent trying to backup network mounts (see below). 



Note: years later, I did read something on the Arch wiki about excluding
something when backing up a system using rsync, to avoid that recursive
loop problem. But I have no desire to stick my hand back into the hornet's
nest again.

So, in backing up my home partition, is use:

sudo rsync -avvzHAXPish --delete /home/default
/media/default/USBHD005/Backup_of_home_directory_of_Dell_Debian_dimwit

to backup my home directory to an external (local) usb hdd.

I just sort of came up with that process (and the command syntax) on my
own.

Good? Bad? Indifferent?
Comments welcome. Especially on the rsync command syntax.
I keep my system images small enough to fit on 16 GB devices -- USB flash drives, SSD's, HDD's, whatever. My backup strategy is many-fold:
1. I wrote a script that calls dd(1) to copy the raw contents to a tar(1) gzip(1) file. I run it from a USB flash drive with Debian installed on it. The script also generates MD5 and SHA256 checksum files, and can reverse the process. I call this "imaging".
2. Whenever I create or modify a system configuration file (e.g. /etc/*), I check-in the file to CVS. I call this "configuration management".
3. I wrote a script that invokes rsync(1) to copy my system drives to backup directories on my SOHO server. I call this "backup". Here is the rsync(1) command issued by the script to backup the system drive in my Debian daily driver. I have replaced the spaces with newlines to avoid e-mail wrapping: 

+ /usr/local/bin/rsync
 -a
 --delete
 -e /usr/bin/ssh
 -x
 root@tinkywinky.tracy.holgerdanske.com:/
 /var/local/backup/tinkywinky.tracy.holgerdanske.com//
Your rsync(1) command has a lot more switches. I am not going to try to figure them out. I prefer to KISS and use the bare minimum.
4. The server data is on ZFS. I wrote another script to snapshot and replicate the ZFS filesystems to other pools -- one on-site, one near-site, and one off-site. The on-site pool is a mirror is inside another server, but the near-site and off-site drives are in mobile dock drawers; I rotate them bi-monthly. I call this "redundant backups". 


David
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