And some others hate it. For me, it does quite a good job, with a ton of add-ons. 
But of course I also use webmail, but at none of the big players, maybe except ProtonMail.
I think instead of trying to guess what is essential, one should back them all up
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Yes, of course. I don’t want to be the one without a copy of
- .ssh/
- .config/
- .local/
- .cinnamon/
- .gconf/
- .profile
- .bashrc
- …
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Please let me know which ones of the hidden files stored in /home you believe are essential to keep in sync with the OS. It is not often I had to restore LM, but the few times I have done it only Firefox complained and no other problem was seen.
And the only time Firefox complained was when Firefox was update (upgraded) then an older Firefox was restored. Now the hidden file did not match the release.
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They are all essential.
You will only notice problems if they change , but who can predict which ones will change?
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Yes, I agree all the hidden files are essential or they would not be there.
No disrespect, but I think you and @abu are missing the point I am trying to make..
My point is what hidden files in /home needs to be in sync with the root partition if a restore is performed. So far I know of only one.
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We are at cross purposes. Sorry.
The ones that need to be in sync are the ones that have changed since the last backup. You cant predict that. You are asking an impossible question in general case.
In one specific case, you might be able to determine it by looking at file dates. Anything dated after the last backup will have changed. Whether the change matters would be difficult to determine.
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Bingo! Yes, a lot of the hidden files certainly have changed since the last backup. Are the changes linked to the OS I am restoring? I’ve found only one so far in my case. All the other changes do not seem to matter to the restored OS.
This might not be true for other OS’s or for anyone else. From my own personal experience, hidden files in /home do not have to be backup up or restored except for .mozilla if you are using Firefox.
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Howard, I think that applies to Timeshift snapshots and restores.
During a general backup with eg Clonezilla, I think you need to back up everything. including hidden files.
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None of them; they are part of your user profile, which you hopefully back up separately.
The possible version mismatch between the FF profile (.mozilla/) and the FF binary is, IMHO, no real issue. You can always download an older FF version that matches your restored profile and then update to the current version. If you don’t want to take these additional steps, you have to save the related binaries together with their profiles.
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Neville, you are 100% correct. The only safe backup includes all system files.
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Thanks for your input Alfred. I did not have a copy of the old profile. That is what I am going to backup now on a regular schedule. Not having the FF profile was no big deal. It was just a pain in the a** setting it up again.
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And I’m thinking about an improvement here by including the version number in the profile backup name.
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A backup is not a backup unless you have proven you can successfully restore from it.
I tend to just use rsync which includes hidden files by default.
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I prefer Clonezilla for my OS backup and I proven it many times.
But I do use a rsync GUI type of program for my data backup. So much faster backing up only the changes.
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Well said that is why we do them
Sorry Howard but as pointed out the restore bit is important, speed is not everything when it comes to getting it back, especially if its only a partial copy
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rsync does not make a separate partial copy when it updates a backup. … it modifies the backup filesystem adding any changes since the last backup. You always have a complete filesystem to recover from.
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So if you had a picture of your dog, then gimp it to add your cat and save it using the same file name does it replace in your backup the old dog with the new dog cat ?
Could you get your old dog image back ?
I still prefer doing 3 copies in rotational order even if it takes longer.
It archives if you use -a option.
So if you make a new filename for the cat image, and delete the dog image in the computer, in the backup you will have both images
but
if you modify a file and dont change its name, it will overwrite the backup copy.
I think every backup routine would do the same. Unix does not keep filename versions automatically like VMS did.. If you want that use git … it allows you go wind back to any version of a file… that is what Linus wrote git for.
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If you know what you’re doing, you can make a backup from another backup using hard links so it really is a partial backup, but works like a full one. I’ve seen it explained, but never did it. It’s particularly useful with the fuzzy options if you just rename files. Without fuzzy, it treats a renamed file as a completely new file and transfers it again.
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