[ale] Today's lesson: rdiff-backup restores

[Alex Carver]

On 2016-02-19 17:48, DJ-Pfulio wrote:
> On 02/19/16 19:42, Alex Carver wrote:
>> The lesson is that restoring files via rdiff-backup actually works quite
>> well.  I'm very happy the restore was relatively painless.
> 
> Yep.
> 
> It sounds simple, but lots of people using other tools fail to restore.
>  Backups are only 10% of the tasks, IMHO.  80% is the restore. The other
> 10% is getting the correct info into the backups to make restore to the
> place desired possible - sometimes that is identical hardware, but other
> times, it isn't.
> 
> Plus, if you just need the latest backup, the a cp -a or rsync works
> just as well.  Nothing fancy required for a restore for the latest.
> Earlier versions can use rdiff-backup to restore easier, but any changes
> are stored as gzip-diffs, so manual restores of specific files do not
> require the tool either.
> 
> No funky formats. That is a rule I live by for all backup tools.
> 
> What stuff do you backup when the backups aren't "everything" to ensure
> a restore?  I save about 4G off every OS backup by being selective.
> Anyone else doing that?

These backups were very selective.  One was the web server document root
and the other was the mysql data directory.  My "backup" of the OS
amounts to dumping the package selection list so I can reinstall that.
I also keep a copy of /etc for all the configurations.


I do the same thing to many other machines.  I just back up whatever
generated data or configuration files exist and the rest comes from source.