I've never used rsync before, and before I dive in, I wanted to know
if anyone has used it to take snapshots of their hard drive at
different points in time and save system settings, programs, etc...? I
know it is designed to save files and keep a record of changes of
files, etc...but what's been your experience backing up your system
using it?

piscesboy <oraclmaster at (no spam) gmail.com> writes:

I've never used rsync before, and before I dive in, I wanted to know
if anyone has used it to take snapshots of their hard drive at
different points in time and save system settings, programs, etc...? I
know it is designed to save files and keep a record of changes of
files, etc...but what's been your experience backing up your system
using it?

That is one of the key uses for rsync. Remember that on a Unix system,
almost everything is a file. Thus if you save files you save the system.
And if you use the hard link option you can also save vast amounts of
space as well, since the system will only transfer the changes, and
store separate copies of changed files
Do not save /proc or /sys as they are generated by the kernel each time
it runs. They are not and do not contain files on the hard drive.
Note also that the is a program called rsnapshot which helps automate
the making of snapshots of your hard driver using rsync.

the key to recovering a working system after e.g. a hardware crash, is

Unruh wrote:
piscesboy <oraclmaster at (no spam) gmail.com> writes:

I've never used rsync before, and before I dive in, I wanted to know
if anyone has used it to take snapshots of their hard drive at
different points in time and save system settings, programs, etc...? I
know it is designed to save files and keep a record of changes of
files, etc...but what's been your experience backing up your system
using it?

That is one of the key uses for rsync. Remember that on a Unix system,
almost everything is a file. Thus if you save files you save the system.
And if you use the hard link option you can also save vast amounts of
space as well, since the system will only transfer the changes, and
store separate copies of changed files
Do not save /proc or /sys as they are generated by the kernel each time
it runs. They are not and do not contain files on the hard drive.
Note also that the is a program called rsnapshot which helps automate
the making of snapshots of your hard driver using rsync.

the key to recovering a working system after e.g. a hardware crash, is
to work out which bits change when you change hardware. I haven't done
this in anger for some years but it takes a little bit of messing
around, but then, yes, you can clone a machine to a different hardware
platform fairly quickly using any file backup system.

The Natural Philosopher <tnp at (no spam) invalid.invalid> writes:

Unruh wrote:
piscesboy <oraclmaster at (no spam) gmail.com> writes:

I've never used rsync before, and before I dive in, I wanted to know
if anyone has used it to take snapshots of their hard drive at
different points in time and save system settings, programs, etc...? I
know it is designed to save files and keep a record of changes of
files, etc...but what's been your experience backing up your system
using it?

That is one of the key uses for rsync. Remember that on a Unix system,
almost everything is a file. Thus if you save files you save the system.
And if you use the hard link option you can also save vast amounts of
space as well, since the system will only transfer the changes, and
store separate copies of changed files
Do not save /proc or /sys as they are generated by the kernel each time
it runs. They are not and do not contain files on the hard drive.
Note also that the is a program called rsnapshot which helps automate
the making of snapshots of your hard driver using rsync.

the key to recovering a working system after e.g. a hardware crash, is
to work out which bits change when you change hardware. I haven't done
this in anger for some years but it takes a little bit of messing
around, but then, yes, you can clone a machine to a different hardware
platform fairly quickly using any file backup system.

Agreed. But assuming that your kernel contains the modules for the new
hardware ( the advantage of distro kernels which tend to support
everything including the kitchen sink garborator), then the key files
are
/etc/fstab-- to make sure that the mount points and the disk partitions
are properly matched
/etc/modules and /etc/modprobe.conf and /etc/modprobe.d to load up the
modules you hardware needs.