Hello All,
I have run openSUSE Leap in the past and I was very happy with it, but recently I made a clean install of openSUSE Tumbleweed. I guess that I jumped into this without very much foresight or planning, but I have not had any problems with it. openSUSE Tumbleweed is my daily driver and my main OS in a dual boot scenario with Windows 10.
The reason for this post is to ask for advice on creating a backup plan. I am currently installing all of the updates as they become available, but I have never performed a back up of my system. Do I need to create a back up? What software do I use to create a back up? How do I utilize a back up in case anything gets borked on my system?
These are the main concerns I have right now. If anyone can point me in the right direction I would certainly be grateful.
Rocky Bennett
Hi
For Tumbleweed, not worth it as each snapshot is a new release… backup your user data, lot’s of tools for this, eg cronopete (on the fly to external storage), fwbackups (can send to remote system), plain old copy to external storage, the ‘cloud’ (or your own cloud if you have a spare system)
If your running btrfs and snapshots you can rollback if it can still boot and select a snapshot.
Have a read here;
https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Disaster_Recovery
For me personally I have a NAS with mirrored disks and backup that to external storage. I don’t worry about the OS, quicker to re-install if things go really bad.
Alright, thanks. User data is always a priority for me, so I always back that up. I was just curious about the system itself and you gave me valuable insight and info.
Thanks again.
Rocky
Hi
If you make any tweaks to system config files, eg snapper config (/etc/snapper/configs/root) and stuff down it /etc then can always copy those to include with your user data.
For example I customize my sensors output with config files in /etc/sensors.d so those get backed up (I use a /data partition for all my stuff, don’t rely on /home/username), sysctl.conf for swap tweaks etc. So would keep on eye on those and backup as required.
Hi Rocky
<<ha, i see you here, i see you at Bleeping Computer…;)>> FYI i do exactly what Malcolm wrote, re any of my customised system files. To illustrate, each time i make some personalised customisation of any important file, i then copy it to my dedicated subdirectory in my /home, so that it then automatically participates in my weekly data backups. As you can see below, i also rename my copies to include the path, as a memory jogger.
gooeygirl@linux-Tower:~/Documents/Software & Stuff/Linux/My customised Linux Root system files/openSUSE Tumbleweed/Tower> ls
applications-kmenuedit.menu 20170830 _etc_snapper_configs_root
applications-kmenuedit.menu 20170929 _etc_sysconfig_lm_sensors
applications-kmenuedit.menu 20171023 _etc_sysctl.conf
applications-kmenuedit.menu 20171031 _etc_sysctl.d_55-magic-sysrq.conf
applications-kmenuedit.menu 20171101 _etc_udev_rules.d_66-brother.rules
_etc_crypttab _home_gooeygirl_.config_kdeglobals
_etc_default_tlp _home_gooeygirl_.config_menus_applications-kmenuedit.menu
_etc_fstab My_openSUSE_Repo
_etc_init.d_boot.local openSUSE Tumbleweed stuff
_etc_sane.d_dll.conf _proc_sys_kernel_sysrq
gooeygirl@linux-Tower:~/Documents/Software & Stuff/Linux/My customised Linux Root system files/openSUSE Tumbleweed/Tower>
So far this scheme has stood me in good stead, not only for those rare occasions i’ve needed to reinstall TW, but also for efficiently replicating my TW scenario from Tower, on my Lappy.
Thank you both for your advice. I would consider myself a Linux newby, or maybe even a Linux wannabe, so there are a few things for me to learn in order to carry out your advice. It seems simple and straight forward, so I will attempt to do this and if I have any problems I will post here in this thread.
Thanks again, and high GooeyGirl. I love hanging out in different computer forums so you will probably see me around the old InterWeb here and there.
Rocky