Hi! A friend just recommended the backup tool that comes with Ubuntu. I took a look at it and was wondering what you guys include and exclude from the backups. I just installed wire guard VPN and but the config file in the etc/wireguard folder, where it belongs. I would have to include this folder as well if I want to keep my configs. And I guess many programs do the same, so how do you know what to include, so you can just revert to the last backup if something breaks or you get a new machine? Maybe that is a stupid question, but it was going through my head for some time now. Thanks a lot!
the most important thing is your user files. everything else just speeds up recovery.
you should keep a bootable recovery medium around, like an installer USB, so you don’t have to bother your neighbours for one at 2 in the morning…
to restore faster, you either make disk images (can restore everything quickly in one go) or save partiton layouts, configs and package selections as well as everything you installed without package management. if you don’t do this second part, you have to sit through a reinstall and figure out everything again and that sucks if you don’t have time. like you really need to open that document, but you forgot the name of the program you use to edit it etc…
if you use just one large file system, you can tar everything up, using --one-file-system , so it skips stuff like the inside of mounted snap packages, which also are present in another place. on restore you then have to format untar and install a boot loader. beware that EFI boot can be difficult to set up and has another partition. so this is just for pros. however, this enables to use tar features like differential backups.
Does
--one-file-systemprevent the need for excluding/dev,/sys, etc.?Yes but be careful with that option because it depends how it’s implemented by each tool. Some of them will not cross btrfs subvolumes for example.
Yeah, I think I can see some other funny cases if there’s multiple partitions with separate filesystems on them. Just doing the regular tar/rsync with exclusions is likely safer as it would work for either case.