[Fwd: Re: [SC.LUG] Backing Up & Transferring Data]

[Richard Smedley]

Oops - forgot to reply-to-list ;)

On Fri, 2007-09-14 at 11:35 +0100, Matthew Tolley wrote:
> I'm about to do a backup of all essential stuff and have three
> questions.
> 
> 1) 	What programs work best for scheduled backup to DVD or external
> Drive? I have a busy life and need a system to either do it
> automatically or remind me to put in a disk.

Most people set up something with rsync and rdiff - it's
easy to get what you want with a short script. However
Bacula might be just what you're looking for [1] if you
can run it on the NAS box, or a home server (or if you
have a server elsewhere on the net).

> 2) 	Although this backup will be to DVD, I am looking at external Hard
> drives or NAS drive for the future. Are these always linux compatible or
> are there special features I need to look for?

The NSLU2 is great - not in standard form, but after
re-flashing with Debian ;-)
I've not used many others, but i would imagine you could talk
to most ``Windows-only'' NASs with SMB Client.

> 3) 	I'd like to back up my evolution mail, address book, notes and
> Calendar Data, plus my Firefox Bookmarks and Thunderbird Mail. The
> problem I have is that when I search for any of these, I don't just have
> one file called 'bookmarks', for example. I have dozens spread over many
> different directories. can you advise on the file paths for all the
> above so I can copy and transfer these files? I'm sadly unfamiliar with
> the linux filesystem (up to now!).

Firefox should keep its bookmarks in 
~/.mozilla/firefox/[randomletters].default/bookmarks.html
Simplest would be to just back up your .mozilla file. 
I haven't used Thunderbird, so I don't know if it
keeps its mail in /var/mail/matthew (where you'll also
find systems messages), ~/Mail, or under ~/.mozilla

You can also back up your bookmarks at a social bookmarking
site like del.icio.us of course ;-)

Really you should be looking to back up all of ~, plus
anything in /etc that you've heavily modified, and
/var/mail

If you've bypassed the package management system to install
your own software at /usr/local/bin you may want to
back up the binaries from there (but not the entire
directory). If you run Debian back up /var/cahe/apt - after
first running apt-get clean of course.

Regards,

 - Richard

[1] http://www.bacula.org/dev-manual/What_is_Bacula.html



-- 
Richard Smedley,                                         rs at m6-it.org
Technical Director,                                     www.M6-IT.org
M6-IT CIC                                        +44 (0)779 456 07 14

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