From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Sep 15 18:28:20 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E33AC16A4CE for ; Wed, 15 Sep 2004 18:28:20 +0000 (GMT) Received: from smtpout.mac.com (smtpout.mac.com [17.250.248.87]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CEE8943D1D for ; Wed, 15 Sep 2004 18:28:20 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from cswiger@mac.com) Received: from mac.com (smtpin02-en2 [10.13.10.147]) by smtpout.mac.com (Xserve/MantshX 2.0) with ESMTP id i8FISKGi017279; Wed, 15 Sep 2004 11:28:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [10.1.1.245] (nfw2.codefab.com [199.103.21.225] (may be forged)) (authenticated bits=0)i8FISIOt009924; Wed, 15 Sep 2004 11:28:19 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v619) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Message-Id: <01BE4FC8-0745-11D9-8490-003065ABFD92@mac.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Charles Swiger Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 14:28:14 -0400 To: Curtis Vaughan X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.619) cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: What to backup X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 18:28:21 -0000 On Sep 15, 2004, at 2:19 PM, Curtis Vaughan wrote: > I have a question about what exactly I should backup on my 5.3 FreeBSD > Server. So far I have chosen the following directories for full > backup. But perhaps some is overkill. The best answer is "backup everything". If you use a decent backup system which support differential or incremental backups, you will generate one large backup image (ie, a level-0 dump), and then future backups will take up a lot less space. If backing everything up requires too much space, backing up /etc, /home, and probably /var/mail is about the minimum one can do, but that depends on whether you have other stuff around that you care about. If you keep the output of "pkg_info" handy, you won't really need to backup /usr/local or /usr/ports; /usr/src, /boot, and /root can generally be recovered from a clean reinstall. -- -Chuck