From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Scott Taylor Subject: Re: system backups with zip disks Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2003 13:43:25 -0800 Sender: linux-admin-owner@vger.kernel.org Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030120133124.01c70b08@mustang> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Return-path: In-Reply-To: <3E2C58C5.4040707@imagelinks.com> List-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format="flowed" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: linux-admin 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. >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. This e-mail was scanned by RAV Antivirus. (www.ravantivirus.com)