Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 11:58:08 -0500 From: Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com> To: FreeBSD Questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: How to backup the users Message-ID: <20080127115808.74051c27.wmoran@potentialtech.com> In-Reply-To: <479CB34A.1060709@otenet.gr> References: <89ce7f740801270759l780e08aaw16710154bf1debe6@mail.gmail.com> <20080127172851.G3181@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl> <479CB34A.1060709@otenet.gr>
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Manolis Kiagias <sonicy@otenet.gr> wrote: > > Wojciech Puchar wrote: > >> Hello, > >> > >> I am running a small FreeBSD server and I have a a couple of users > >> ssh'ing to it. I want to wipe the server out and reinstall FreeBSD on > >> it, but I want to preserve the users' credentials. Can you please > >> advise me how to back them up? > > > > /home/* > > /etc/master.passwd > > /var/cron/tabs/* > > /var/mail/* > > > > possibly other files. > > > > > > but format+reinstall is when you have windows, with unix there is no > > need to. > > > > > You might as well save the whole /etc, you will probably need other conf > files and surely you would like to have /etc/passwd and /etc/group > In fact, I would also backup the whole /usr/local/etc to get all the > configuration settings for my services and so on. A good, general rule of thumb for backing up a system is: /etc /usr/local/etc /home /var /var is the wildcard here ... /etc and /usr/local/etc are generally very small. /home can be huge, but if it is, it's probably because there is a lot of important data there. But /var can be large with a lot of stuff that you may not want to back up. Do you need /var/log, for example? Frankly, if you have enough space to back up, I recommend you back up the entire system and restore selectively. Do you have, for example, a database in /usr/local/pgsql? If you're asking this question, you're probably better off safe than sorry. -- Bill Moran http://www.potentialtech.com
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