What files to back up?

[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?

[tylerwylie]

Anything you want to save from /etc/?

[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.)

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sudo tar cjf foo.tbz2 /boot /etc

gives me a file about 45-50mb.

[Volker]

/boot should only contain kernel binaries but no user-configurable files. I just back up /etc.

[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)

[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.

[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

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/etc/resolv.conf

Very important for large LCD monitors modelines and all sorts

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/etc/X11/xorg.conf

Might be important to your setup

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/etc/hosts

Basically if you tweak your kernel then you don't want to forget this

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/usr/src/linux/.config

So you know what modules to install

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/etc/modules.autoload/kernel-2.6

So you know what kernel to boot

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/boot/grub/menu.lst

For conky

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/home/user/.conkyrc

Everything in there

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/home/user/.fluxbox/*

Those are the main ones I can remember off the top of my head

I used to take the

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/etc/fstab

file and the

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/etc/hosts.allow

but I'm not on a nfs system and I can mount anything now from memory ok

[tylerwylie]

Don't you mean /etc/X11/xorg.conf ?

[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.

[independent]

Yes I do mean

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/etc/X11/xorg.conf

Post corrected thanks