[mdlug] Network backup options

[David Relson]

On Sun, 04 Feb 2007 08:25:17 -0500
R Kannan wrote:

> Thanks to everyone who offered help on this thread.
> 
> I used tar as suggested by Carl and backed up all my partitions.
> However, while backing up '/', tar complained about files under 'proc'
> (may be I don't need to back them up at all)  and I had to use
> '--ignore-failed-read' to make that work. I am hoping that did not
> cause any harm. The compressed files are about half the size and I
> could back them up on DVDs.
> 
> The harddrive on my desktop seemed to have stabilized after 'fsck'ing
> the partitions but I guess I cannot take any chances. I will use the
> scripts that I have generated to do future backups often till I
> install a replacement drive.

There are several entries in / that aren't directories,
notably /dev /proc.  They don't need to be backed up.  To the degree
that they reflect the running state of your system, they can't be
backed up.  Don't worry about them!  Even better, use tar's "--exclude"
option to ignore them.

HTH,

David