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Re: [LUG] Borked system rescue plan

 

Afraid Microsoft Windows restore doesn't exempt one from the need for proper backups 
either. Systems corrupt beyond its abilities, hard disks fail.

There is no one proper backup plan.

One approach I would suggest backup everything with a file level backup. I use 
"Rsync" to copy files to another disk for quick recovery. And use tar to create 
regular archives of the current state. I very rarely use the tarballs but do check 
they are working occasionally.

That said if you are trashing stuff you care about regularly you are doing something 
wrong. My current desktop has a fairly linear heritage going back 10 years of 
Debian. Content in /home goes back to a previous Linux system. Note I mirror my hard 
drives, there are at least two disk failures in that 10 year period, they only 
damaged my wallet.

With /home as a separate partition, I should be able in theory to reinstall Linux 
around my data. In practice there is a load of state in hidden files in my home 
directory that typically requires it evolves with the system. More and more stuff I 
care about is finding its way into /var and /etc, so not sure the old idea of 
treating /home differently is as true as it once was, but I don't regret making it 
separate partition. 

Setting it up again would consider a snapshot based system for /home, and etckeeper 
for /etc is a given these days, but you still need a regular backup (and mirrored 
drives?) to survive the inevitable hard drive death without losing too much data.
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