I like to keep my system files and my data backups separate. I have the /home directory in it’s own partition meaning home is not in the root directory.
I use Clonezilla to backup the ./ (system) and that works very well.
I use tar to backup my data in the /home directory.
But there are a lot of hidden files in /home that do not get backup with tar which seems fine because they seem to be mostly temporary files that do not matter if I perform a restore of the root system.
Except one Firefox
So I now know I also have to backup the hidden file .mozilla at the same time I backup root.
So my questions are. Are there other hidden files in /home I should be concern with? Should I keep a /home in the root directory and just not use it for data? How do you keep your system and data in home as separate backups or do you combine system and /home data backup together?
First I would check emails. Like if you use Thunderbird backup also these files. Maybe not too critical because you can use your phone to use email but still I prefer not to loose my Thunderbird files.
My root include /home so we have different disk layout.
Yes. I think you should include all dot files in your tar.
I think you can do it like this
Instead of
tar -cf /home/howard/*
can you do
tar -cf /home/howard/.
Note the ‘.’
I think that will include dot files. Check it for me please.
I treat /home as part of the system… whether it is a separate partition or not.
So I dont use /home for personal data… I have an entirely separate partition called /common that I mount to each Linux that I multiboot.
That means all my linuxes can see the same /common… you cant do that with /home because different linuxes have different dot files
I backup /common nightly with rsync (tar would do). I backup system partitions , including home partitions if they are separate, with clonezilla, when I think it is needed. I dont have timeshift snapshots.
So essentially you and I do the same thing.