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What files to back up?
Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2008 8:57 am
by rmcder
Since I now have a separate HOME partition, it occurs to me that I should put copies of the important configuration files on it. Xorg.conf is an obvious candidate, as is menu.lst. What others?
Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2008 9:13 am
by tylerwylie
Anything you want to save from /etc/?
Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2008 10:45 am
by tarvoke
might as well get all of /boot and /etc, that covers just about everything and you never know what you'll need and when.
(/boot may be largish depending on how many kernel images you have there, if you have initrd images, etc.)
gives me a file about 45-50mb.
Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2008 10:56 am
by Volker
/boot should only contain kernel binaries but no user-configurable files. I just back up /etc.
Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2008 11:00 am
by tarvoke
/boot/grub/menu.lst is fairly user configurable and may have custom modifications
/boot/config-* is often highly useful
in addition, some people still build custom kernels ^_^
(in which case /lib/modules is also worth backing up)
Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2008 11:33 pm
by short101
No need to back up the modules, but your right, the configs can be handy so you dont have to go through all your kernel options if you reinstall. /etc and /var/www related things (databases) are about the only things I back up.
Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 1:55 am
by independent
This is a really interesting question.
The biggies in my book (sort-of) in order of importance:
If you need to get online, without this you're not going anywhere
Very important for large LCD monitors modelines and all sorts
Might be important to your setup
Basically if you tweak your kernel then you don't want to forget this
So you know what modules to install
So you know what kernel to boot
For conky
Everything in there
Those are the main ones I can remember off the top of my head
I used to take the
file and the
but I'm not on a nfs system and I can mount anything now from memory ok
Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 2:37 am
by tylerwylie
Don't you mean /etc/X11/xorg.conf ?
Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 7:27 am
by lightweight
Depending on your distro (and philosophy), /usr/local/etc, too. BSD folk (not so true of FreeBSD, but thats for another post) will often build their /usr/local to be easily exportable from box to box, and extending this philosophy to backups is good. Forcing yourself to work with /usr/local and no distro-specific libs is good practice.
Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 3:23 pm
by independent
Yes I do mean
Post corrected thanks