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Re: [LUG] Backups

 

On Wed, Mar 05, 2008 at 10:43:09AM +0000, Tony Sumner wrote:
> On Mar 04, 2008, Henry Bremridge was like:
> 
> >   Once created go through the list and remove the files you do not want
> 
> I don't think this is a good idea. If you discard a file you want it is gone
> forever. Back up everything first and throw stuff away later. 
> 

let me rephrase:

1.  In your home directory, create a text file of all files / directories
    that you wish to back up

    $ls -laF > Text_file.txt

2.  Go through the file Text_file.txt and delete any line in that file that
    relates to a file or directory that you do not want backed up. You may
    need to add specific sub-directories by hand. Save the resulting file

    eg I spent some time going through my list and saving only the stuff
    that I wanted to save. For example: I was not concerned with all the
    Openoffice setup files except my templates. Similarly I was not
    interested in saving my Firefox plugins, cookies, cache etc: but I did
    want my bookmarks. 
    
    Your mileage will differ.

3.  Create a tar file of all directories files that you want backed up

    $tar -cvf backed_up_files.tar --files-from=Text_file.txt

4.  Compress backed up files 
    
    $bzip2 backed_up_files.tar

Other Issues

1.  Steps 3 and 4 can be run at the same time

    $tar -cvjf backed_up_files.tar --files-from=Text_file.txt

2.  The backup command can be run from crontab so that every day all your
    files are backed up

    $tar -cvjf backed_up_files.tar --newer-mtime=20080101 --files-from=Text_file.txt

    This command backs up all files that have been modified since 1 Jan
    2008. Hence you can run a full back up and then automtically backup
    all files since then and save those to a USB drive.

-- 
Henry
Wed Mar  5 11:37:02 GMT 2008

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