On 24/11/2021 10:08, Olaf Meeuwissen via Dng wrote:
Hi Hendrik,

Hendrik Boom writes:

I'm setting up a new backup script that will do it all piecemeal so
that if a part of it fails, it can be retried without having to start
*everythng* over from scratch.

Which top-level filesystems should *not* be backed up.

To start with, I presumably shouldn't back up

/proc
/tmp
/dev (cause I'm using some version of *udev)
/mnt
ACK.

and I certainly should back up /var, /usr. /root, /bin,
/boot, /etc, /home, /lib, /lib64, /sbin
I wouldn't bother with /var/cache and /var/log but you're talking
top-level ;-)

... but if you run a nameserver you may well need:

    /var/cache/bind

as that's where your zonefiles are ;-)


/boot is managed by installing kernel images and grub (using settings in
/etc/grub) so isn't all that important to include.  At least on amd64.

But what about

/run
/srv
/sys
?
Both /run and /sys are tmpfs file systems.  Not worth backing up.


However some admins put services in:

    /srv

and some third-party suppliers of software place it in:

    /opt

for example Sophos anti-virus.

Basically, you should only care about a subset of what lives below the
mount points listed by

   df | grep ^/ | awk '{print $6}'

and make sure your backup command doesn't cross file system boundaries.
That should automatically exclude things like /dev, /proc, /run, /sys
and may (or may not) exclude /tmp (depending on installation choices).
As /mnt is meant for temporary mounts, that should be excluded too.

What are those even used for?
I would have pointed you to the FHS but as Lars pointed out already `man
7 hier` will tell.

Of course, if you don't use things like /srv and /opt, there's not much
of a cost to backing up the empty directories :-)

Hope this helps,
--
Olaf Meeuwissen, LPIC-2            FSF Associate Member since 2004-01-27
  GnuPG key: F84A2DD9/B3C0 2F47 EA19 64F4 9F13  F43E B8A4 A88A F84A 2DD9
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