[Gllug] couple of quick questions (USB stick and backups)

[Nix]

On Thu, 23 Mar 2006, Richard Jones suggested tentatively:
> On Fri, Mar 24, 2006 at 12:49:28AM +0100, salsaman wrote:
>> Will tar work on a running system ? Last time I tried this, it got stuck 
>> in a loop in the /proc filesystem, because /proc/<pid>/root is a symlink 
>> to the root filesystem. Backing up /dev is probably also not I good idea 
>> I suppose...
> 
> It's probably not a good idea to back up the system itself -- after
> all, Linux ISOs can be downloaded from everywhere, quickly, for free,
> whereas your own data is rather more precious.  Concentrate on backing
> up your own data, eg. /home, /etc, possibly /usr/local/, and any other
> places you use.

It's certainly never a good idea to back up /proc. It's entirely
virtual, after all: among other things /proc/kcore is a monster.

(Obviously you don't want to chase symlinks when running backups!)


The list of excluded filesystem types in my backup script runs

( 'proc', 'sysfs', 'msdos', 'devpts', 'tmpfs', 'openpromfs', 'iso9660',
  'udf', 'usbdevfs', 'minix', 'vfat', 'nfs', 'none' );

... but these are merely the virtual filesystems I happen to use. Others
certainly exist (debugfs, for instance).

-- 
`Come now, you should know that whenever you plan the duration of your
 unplanned downtime, you should add in padding for random management
 freakouts.'
-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at gllug.org.uk
http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug