Backing up for beginners

[J Swarthout]

Hey Everyone


Could you guys suggest the best way/app to back up my Ubuntu system? I was also wondering if there was any way of backing up applications as well.

[black veils]

to backup settings for your applications, you go into the relevant /home/username folder, show hidden files by pressing Ctrl + H, copy-paste all the stuff you want/need. they will be in the main folder, .config, and .kde

best to ignore .cache and .local

there are backup applications available, but as i have never used them, i cannot really say.

[oldfred]

discussion of alternatives/strategy backups
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BackupYourSystem

It almost is too many choices and methods.
Some like full images using clonezilla or similar applications.
Others prefer incremental backups.
And many combine them.

I use rsync and backup /home and some other settings and a list of installed apps. I assume I will just do a new clean install and restore data, so I do not need a full image backup.


Full image backups
http://clonezilla.org/
Free Imaging software - CloneZilla & PartImage - Tutorial
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/f..._software.html
http://www.geekconnection.org/remastersys/
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/remastersys
Tar backup script:
https://help.ubuntu.com/12.04/server...llscripts.html


https://help.ubuntu.com/community/rsync#Grsync


Originally Posted by MountainX View Post #20 also other backup apps
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...ghlight=backup
Sample rsync file, use a text editor and paste into a file & name it mybackup.sh


https://help.ubuntu.com/community/rsync
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CronHowto
Oldfred's list of stuff to backup May 2011:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1748541

[cmcanulty]

i love grsync, very fast and easy to use try a dry run first just so you don't erase anything vital. any help needed contact me

[ally_uk]

Easier option mount a external hard disk and transfer your data to it or drop box

[cmcanulty]

If you just transfer it every time you back up everything gets copied again. With grsync it is incremental, you only copy new or changed files. I do 230GB so means I back up in a few mins if it was all copied each time it would take forever.

[cortman]

Or just good old rsync:

rsync -az /home/cortman/mystuff /media/my_backup_drive

for example.

[bashhimup]

You can also go to System Settings, and choose Backup.

[bro]

I like back in time. It makes incremental backups, so after the first time it is quite fast and it remains easy to browse through the past as it shows you all of your files as they were at a given date. Very friendly.

Besides browser favorites I don't backup any applications. Not sure if it would be easy or good to install from backup since apt keeps track of your installs and versions too. Linux programs are usually spread through the file system and many share libraries. You can backup their settings but the entire app is probably not very workable.