We all know that, as already stated earlier in another topic.
Very true! You got 
points and a huge 
for the quote of the day! 
Another for this statement.
Squeezing my entire $HOME into a tarball takes approx. 15 minutes, and I keep several generations of it. I also prefer history over the last version.
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The Borg backup,program does that.
I tried Borg. … too complex for me.
I believe Timeshift does something like that too.
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Rsync copies the changes of the master to the backup copy. Now the master and backup are in sync. The backup is a mirror of the master after the update. No better restore option then having a full image of the original files.
For extra protection, I usually rsync to a third disk. Now I have 3 complete copies of my data. Again it is so much faster to copy only the changes that were made to the master copy.
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Ok Howard I stand corrected, never used this system
For me a backup is a backup, start it sunday night before bed to disk 1, Monday morning its finished during the night. Following week repeat to disk 2, week after disk 3, week 4 back to disk 1,
But my back up disks usually have several copies on them so in theory I could go back a few months as I do a fresh clean copy every time. Only delete backup copies ad the disk starts to fill.
To be honest its years since I needed to pull back a site I had done perhaps a year before to reclaimed a photo as I dont do that type of work that often dont really have anything so important.
My life now is simple, dont keep emails, dont keep images, rare I keep documents…….
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That is like the way Howard and I use Clonezilla.
That is entirely separate from rsync or Timeshift snapshots.
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Hi Paul, whatever works for you is fine. The main thing is to have a good backup and not only do you have a good backup, but you could go back several generations if you needed to.
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Years ago when I researched it, all the programs I found were way too simplistic or way too complicated, so I wrote my own in bash using rsync. It’s very basic, but it works and it’s table-driven so it doesn’t require a lot of recoding when things change.
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At last, someone who understands that having too many options (or not enough) can make a program unusable.
The other attribute I take issue with is programs that try to guess what you need, and make decisions behind your back.
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As we can see, neither rsync nor tar is unusable, even if they both have a plethora of options. This is why we write wrapper scripts for daily use.
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At last, someone who understands that having too many options (or not enough) can make a program unusable.
The other attribute I take issue with is programs that try to guess what you need, and make decisions behind your back.
There’s psychological research that shows that having too many choices makes people less happy.
I bet you love the current batch of LLM AIs. LOL
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Negative on that.
Do you think we will see an AI Linux DE soon?
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A post was split to a new topic: Will we see an AI based DE in Linux?
Exactly the point. Scripts are a solution to over-complex commands.
The original Unix had a command called rc … stands for run control.
You put a series of commands on a file and did rc filename and it executed them in sequence… sort of like the sequence of job control cards in a card deck.
Not quite a shell script but it did help in the same way.
I guess modern files like rc.local get their name from the old rc command.
I wonder why they abandoned it?
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Even though this item has been marked as solved, I’m still going to post my own thoughts for you, just in case something I have to say is helpful, either for you, or anyone else who reads this at a later point in time!
For me the simplest solution, when you have your /home directory on a separate partition, is to use Rescuezilla to create an image for the root partition, and another for the /home partition, still keeping both separate!. Since Rescuezilla uses Clonezilla behind the scenes, you should be able to accomplish the same thing, and IIUC, you should be able to exclude specific file types as well, so you don’t waste space on backing up temporary files, or log files, etc. But you have to configure that option to meet your needs When in doubt, I keep the file type or directory unchecked for exclusion, because I’d prefer to have files I don’t need than need a file, and not have it following a full system recovery that includes the /home partition!
Ernie
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Actually, the /home directory is located on the root (/) partition, while your /home partition is mounted under that same /home directory, so everything under the /home directory is located on the /home partition (note the difference between directory and partition).
I hope I made this clear enough,
Ernie
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Yes, you are right. I may have said it wrong. I was talking about the home partition and that the hidden files were not in sync with my Clonezilla backup. Really in my case, only one hidden file seems to matter and that was .mozilla for Firefox.
I don’t have to restore often, but the last time I did it on my desktop I had to set Firefox up again b/c the restored Firefox did not agree with the hidden file in /home. It was not a big deal, just a pain in the a**.
Mint has a utility in the menu to backup the home partition. For my solution, I now include the hidden file .moziila in that backup.
Thanks for you input, Ernie.
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Lets clarify. That home item in the root filesystem is symbolic link… a pointer to the filesystem on the /home partition.
CORRECTION /home can be a mount point ( ie a directory) or a symlink, or the actual home filesystem
Thanks @abu .
If you did not set up a separate home partition at boot, you cam move it. Simply copy home and its contents to another new partition, delete home in the root partition, and make the symlink.
We used to do that sort of thing a lot years ago when disks were small and users kept filling up /home.
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I wouldn’t name it symlink in general, unless for your solution with moved homes.
The /home in the root FS is either
- a real directory that contains all users homes
- a mount point for the user homes on another partition (in fact, a directory as well)
- a symlink to the users homes elsewhere
Just my 2 cents.
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You are right. When the install does it, it makes a mount point, which is also a directory. It is only a symlink if done afterwards by admin.
I made a correction in my original reply… with acknowledgement… Thank you.
My data partiton has a mount point in / plus a symlink in my home directory.
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