Re: [gentoo-user] backing up system files

On Sun, Dec 02, 2012 at 03:29:58PM -0500, Philip Webb wrote:
> My recently-built machine has an SSD for everyday storage
> + an HDD for less often used stuff + back-ups (in dir  /y ).
> To avoid having to re-install the system if the SSD collapses one day,
> I wanted to make a simple back-up copy of vital files on the HDD.

I recently installed an SSD to replace three SCSI drives and changed
my backup at the same time to work llike this.  But I just do
everything except /home, /encfs, the mail spool dir, etc.  I also use
a spare IDE drive for a system backup which I manually rsync before a
big emerge, so I can boot the backup if the main system no longer
boots due to emerge screwup.  I have some other changes to make before
testing this.

What I haven't figured out yet is how to reverse rsync the backup to
the main system.  Rsync has no --source-is-always-right option that I
could find.  "cp -a" might work, with a little care for /dev etc, but
it won't delete destination files which aren't in the backup, and the
idea of reformatting the system partition as part of this seems a bit
extreme when rsync is the natural choice for restoring the backup.

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