crp Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 is the sys directory supposed to be skipped when doing backups? tar: /sys/module/e1000/sections/.strtab: File shrank by 4077 bytes; padding with zeros tar: /sys/module/e1000/sections/.symtab: File shrank by 4077 bytes; padding with zeros tar: /sys/module/e1000/sections/.module_sig: File shrank by 4077 bytes; padding with zeros tar: /sys/module/e1000/sections/.bss: File shrank by 4077 bytes; padding with zeros tar: /sys/module/e1000/sections/.gnu.linkonce.this_module: File shrank by 4077 bytes; padding with zeros tar: /sys/module/e1000/sections/.data.read_mostly: File shrank by 4077 bytes; padding with zeros tar: /sys/module/e1000/sections/.data: File shrank by 4077 bytes; padding with zeros tar: /sys/module/e1000/sections/__versions: File shrank by 4077 bytes; padding with zeros tar: /sys/module/e1000/sections/__param: File shrank by 4077 bytes; padding with zeros tar: /sys/module/e1000/sections/.smp_locks: File shrank by 4077 bytes; padding with zeros tar: /sys/module/e1000/sections/.rodata.str1.1: File shrank by 4077 bytes; padding with zeros and about a few hundred more of the same. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amenditman Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 (edited) Yes, you should skip /sys, /dev/, /proc, /tmp, /run, /media, /lost+found, and most likely /mnt. All of those are either temporary and created when the system starts or are just junk. If you have stuff mounted at /mnt that you want backed up you can include it in your tar. Edited March 30, 2015 by amenditman 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 (edited) If you asked me to come up with a list of backup options for Linux, Tar would not even make my list. It is a throw-back to magnetic tape storage days when storage space was a premium and everything had to be compressed and re-compressed and further compressed before it could be backed up practically. In today's era of HUGE mechanical and solid state drives, the Tar method is just not needed. Personally, I mirror my entire operating system hard drive onto an identical drive using grsync. That's all that needs to be done. The odds of both drives failing simultaneously are quite high. However, that's me. If you prefer using Tar to compress and backup your system, that's cool beans. Unfortunately, I don't know do-do about it, so can't really advise. Guess I shouldn't have posted anything at all, huh? Clear as chocolate pudding and not nearly as useful. Par for my advice. Edited to correct spelling error. ~Eric Edited March 30, 2015 by V.T. Eric Layton 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 Yes, as /sys is sysfs is a ram-based filesystem [...]. It provides a means to export kernel data structures, their attributes, and the linkages between them to userspace. http://superuser.com/questions/794198/directory-sys-in-linux Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crp Posted March 31, 2015 Author Share Posted March 31, 2015 I need a backup that will compress to fit onto the backup device. can rsync do differential backups when it is compressing as well? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted March 31, 2015 Share Posted March 31, 2015 http://www.howtogeek.com/135533/how-to-use-rsync-to-backup-your-data-on-linux/?PageSpeed=noscript http://www.howtogeek.com/175008/the-non-beginners-guide-to-syncing-data-with-rsync/?PageSpeed=noscript If you read these two articles you will have all the info you need on rsync. Mind you they come with a warning, Warning: Advanced Geeks Only 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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