On 2020-04-23 17:52, Default User wrote:
Thanks to all for the information.
I may just stay with what I have, for now. If it ain't broke, don't fix it?
I would not make any changes because of the smartclt reports.
BTW, aside from neglecting to put a subject line in the original post, l
should have mentioned that both the root and home partitions are regular
ext4 (no lvm or encryption).
And by BIOS booting, I meant using a traditional mbr, not gpt. And I use
grub2, not lilo or anything else.
May I ask one additional question?
I back up my home partition only, because:
1) I figure that I always reinstall the system from scratch, and either
re-attach the home partition, or add back the data from it bit by bit if
re-attaching the home partition doesn't work (well).
2) Years ago, I tried to back up my whole system using rsync. That
created a bizarre, seemingly recursive monstrosity which ended only when
the entire drive was filled. I never forgot that.
Without seeing the exact command issued, it would be hard to figure out.
But, I do use the -x (--one-file-system) option when invoking rsync(1)
to prevent trying to backup network mounts (see below).
Note: years later, I did read something on the Arch wiki about excluding
something when backing up a system using rsync, to avoid that recursive
loop problem. But I have no desire to stick my hand back into the hornet's
nest again.
So, in backing up my home partition, is use:
sudo rsync -avvzHAXPish --delete /home/default
/media/default/USBHD005/Backup_of_home_directory_of_Dell_Debian_dimwit
to backup my home directory to an external (local) usb hdd.
I just sort of came up with that process (and the command syntax) on my
own.
Good? Bad? Indifferent?
Comments welcome. Especially on the rsync command syntax.
I keep my system images small enough to fit on 16 GB devices -- USB
flash drives, SSD's, HDD's, whatever. My backup strategy is many-fold:
1. I wrote a script that calls dd(1) to copy the raw contents to a
tar(1) gzip(1) file. I run it from a USB flash drive with Debian
installed on it. The script also generates MD5 and SHA256 checksum
files, and can reverse the process. I call this "imaging".
2. Whenever I create or modify a system configuration file (e.g.
/etc/*), I check-in the file to CVS. I call this "configuration
management".
3. I wrote a script that invokes rsync(1) to copy my system drives to
backup directories on my SOHO server. I call this "backup". Here is
the rsync(1) command issued by the script to backup the system drive in
my Debian daily driver. I have replaced the spaces with newlines to
avoid e-mail wrapping:
+ /usr/local/bin/rsync
-a
--delete
-e /usr/bin/ssh
-x
r...@tinkywinky.tracy.holgerdanske.com:/
/var/local/backup/tinkywinky.tracy.holgerdanske.com//
Your rsync(1) command has a lot more switches. I am not going to try to
figure them out. I prefer to KISS and use the bare minimum.
4. The server data is on ZFS. I wrote another script to snapshot and
replicate the ZFS filesystems to other pools -- one on-site, one
near-site, and one off-site. The on-site pool is a mirror is inside
another server, but the near-site and off-site drives are in mobile dock
drawers; I rotate them bi-monthly. I call this "redundant backups".
David
