[plug] Current state / method / best programs to backup home desktop Ubuntu 13.04

[Brad Campbell]

On 12/08/13 11:19, Shanon Loughton wrote:
> Hi
>
> Whats the easiest method for first backup / create sparse incremental
> schedule (maybe quarterly, or started manually).  I tried Deja Dup but
> not sure how well that would restore a broken system, I think its just
> simple file recovery.
> I just got a new system and Im so happy how many games Ive got going on
> it from Steam games to SC2 I need to snapshot it fast before Unity
> breaks irreparably!
> thanks

I use rsync on a nightly basis to give me 60 days of complete rotating 
backups. My system is a home-brewed piece of nasty python code, but I 
believe rsnapshot would do the same job in a much nicer way.

The backups are complete enough that I can wipe my desktop PC, boot a 
live-cd and rsync the file-systems back to return a fully functioning 
system.

It means I can be considerably less careful when trying out bleeding 
edge packages because if I break the system I'm only one rsync away 
(well, two - home is on a separate partition) from undoing all the damage.