Hi! A friend just recommended the backup tool that comes with Ubuntu. I took a look at it and was wondering what you guys include and exclude from the backups. I just installed wire guard VPN and but the config file in the etc/wireguard folder, where it belongs. I would have to include this folder as well if I want to keep my configs. And I guess many programs do the same, so how do you know what to include, so you can just revert to the last backup if something breaks or you get a new machine? Maybe that is a stupid question, but it was going through my head for some time now. Thanks a lot!
If you want to be able to restore the machine completely, with everything installed and configured, then yes you have to backup everything. There’s generally two ways, file-level backup where you’d use something like rsync, tar, etc. and block-level where you’d backup the whole partition/disk using something like dd, clonezilla, etc. The latter is the easiest to restore but it’s a bit of a pain to backup because the system generally has to be offline, booted from alternative OS. The forner is a bit more difficult to restore but not by much, and it’s so easier to backup. You can do it while the system is live. I’d probably try that first. Find documentation on backing up a complete root filesystem with rsync/tar and you’re good to go. Some ideas. It’s typically a single command which can be run on a schedule.
The built-in GUI backup tool is generally intended for your own user data. In order to be able to backup other things it’ll have to run as root or be given caps and that might get more complicated than using straight rsync/tar.
You can use Borg for both things you mentioned. It stores deduplicated chunks so it doesn’t care if you backup files or a block device.
Not sure why you’d have to be offline to do that though.
What I am always wondering, to set up Linux until everything runs without problem, it takes quite some time for me. I use Linux for about a year regularly, and had to set it up about 4-5 times. And it almost always is a pain and I need to search online for some time until everything works. Is it getting easier the more often it’s done? Or do you create a setup script that runs everything if you reinstall the system?
@avidamoeba @WbrJr Just install a pre-configured distro like Mint or Fedora and stay away from Arch