System Backups

Eventually, a mistake or a mishap will lead to the desire to restore from a backup. Only a good backup can restore the system to the state it was in before the mistake or mishap occurred. My preferred backup scheme is based on Easy Automated Snapshot-Style Backups with Linux and Rsync

The rsnapshot filesystem snapshot utility written in perl is often cited as good, but its configuration and usage is a bit more complicated than I prefer.

A simplified snapshot script (though not one I use) was found at rsnap - backup and snapshot utility based on rsync

I have tried many schemes including tar backups in an effort to keep backups of the system at various stages at different points in time and the rsync snapshot scheme affords the capability to "go back in time" if and when a mishap occurs. The real beauty of rsync snapshots is that the system can be restored entirely from any one of the snapshots. Doing an analogous thing with tar "incremental backups" would require restoring the pieces in a particular order.

So far, I've kept over 30 snapshots during the course of installing BLFS (Beyond Linux From Scratch) and have successfully rolled back the system a couple of times when things went sour.

I have a rsync snapshot script currently under development which I use because none of the ones I have found will do it exactly the way I want. I call it back_up and it works for me.