I have used adhoc scripts that do nightly backups of my important files. I zip up critical directories into huge tarballs – not too pretty but gets the job done.
I wanted to back up an entire linux system so it could be easily recreated, and decided it was time to get a little more sophisticated. Enter [rdiff-backup]. I’m emerging it now, but it’s requiring several updates. For one, it’s new kernel time, and there are a few new options to choose when using [make oldconfig]. I went with defaults, as usual, for every option that provided one. I had to pick these though:
Kernel compression mode: 1. Gzip
RCU Subsystem: 1. Classic RCUThen I had to add FUSE to the kernel and emerge [ntfs-3g], so I could mount my external drive and back up to it.
[make menuconfig]: File systems->[x] FUSE (and rebuild and install kernel of course)
emerge -Davu sys-fs/fuse ntfs-3gThen I emerged rdiff-backup, and ran the following:
rdiff-backup --exclude-other-filesystems --exclude-special-files -v5 --exclude /home/me/backup / /mnt/external_drive/backup/machinenameAnd away we go!
