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What to include in a backup? (Ubuntu)
(lemmy.ml)
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this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2024
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I back up the entirety of my /home directory except for cache, temp, trash (trash is stored at /home/$user/.local/share/Trash), Download folder, and a folder I named "NOBACKUP".
It backs up a lot of stuff I probably don't need, but I'd rather back up more than I need, than to be caught not backing up something that I did need.
edit: oh, I have a btrfs snapshot of /root too, but I don't think that's something the backup tool in Ubuntu can do since it defaults to ext4
It's best not to overuse native filesystem snapshots. Someone else was saying they delete them daily, that's the right spirit.
Filesystem snapshots can't be dissociated from that filesystem and they are strictly incremental to the point they're literally all-or-nothing which is quite inconvenient.
They're good for those "oh fuck" moments when you've just deleted the wrong dir but that's about it.
That's a good point, I use my /home backup via borgbackup which I keep for a bit longer (store 7 days + last 2 weekly before it prunes them), and my /root btrfs snapshots were set to be kept for 7 days just out of habit. I'll probably dial it back to 2-3 days instead. I do intend them as just rollbacks rather than actual backups but I tend to be too overly cautious for my own good sometimes
I like to keep a few more than the last day of snapshots as a minimum in case there was something silently breaking my system that I didn't notice for a few days and is too advanced for me to fix normally