Re: system backups with zip disks

[Scott Taylor <scott@mustang.dctchambers.com>]

At 12:15 PM 1/20/03, Jeff Largent wrote:
>Backing up and entire system is a complete waste of time.

I have to disagree with you there Jeff.  I see at least 2-4 updates on 
software packages every week, sure a lot of them are for the same package 
numerous times.

On any *nix system, it's a good idea to backup the entire file system at 
least once a week; who wants to go do all that work again.  And all good 
SysAdmins have a recovery tool, such as BRU, that they can fit onto one 
diskette, boot from it (or a second diskette, or even CD today) and restore 
the entire tape, then a few tweaks and you are back up again.

>The install media is the backup for your programs.
>Back up your configs and data, The progs themseleves can
>be reinstalled faster than you read all of that off of tape.

<snip>

>This should only take you less than an hour and your system will
>be exactly like it was on the date of your last backup.

I doubt any safe, secure,  production system could be restored in even a 
couple of hours just by having all the configs in place.

Jude has the right idea, just the wrong material.

>Jude DaShiell wrote:
>>I was trying to backup the entire contents of the slackware 8.0 system.
>>I didn't figure to have to do this all that regularly but even with cdrw
>>drives that would have used 6 disks by now.  As things stand, everything
>>new I've downloaded I've got backed up.  After that, I'll probably end up
>>backing up /home and /etc directory trees and leave it at that.

BTW Jude,
Don't forget to back up your databases, web pages and other oddball configs 
you might find in /var, /usr/libexec, /usr/share et al.  Never assume all 
configs are where they are supposed to be (/etc), unless you put them there 
yourself. :)

Scott.

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