Backing up /home from the command line

[bag]

Dear all,

Got a fairly simple question that shouldn't prove too hard, but still, I'm struggling anyway. I'd appreciate any help I could get on it.

I have an encrypted /home partition. I want to back it up - but simple drag and drop copy from my /home to a (vfat) USB drive fails repeatedly. The specific failure is that it gets some way through the process and then tells me that it cannot create a folder. This causes the whole thing to fail, and stop. It happens repeatedly, and even if I remove that folderset from the backup and try again, it seems to happen again later with another folder. I kept going like this, repeatedly removing folders from the backup - but it keeps failing.

I have stopped trying now that it fails on my ./thunderbird folder. I really need my e-mails!! I can't afford to not have it back that one up...!

I need to find a way to back up my data and be sure that I have everything. However, because I currently have a problem with apt-get (see this post: ) I cannot currently install new software to do it.

So I'm looking for alternative solutions. How can I do this from the command line? Is this possible?

I can boot to a GUI using the nouveau driver, and I can log in to my account. As such, the partition is decrypted whilst I have access to it. But is there anything getting in the way of me backing up the data on this partition? Why am I not able to make a backup with a simple drag and drop?

What alternatives are there for making a full decrypted backup from the command line, and if possible, verifying it at the same time etc?

I intend to make a clean install of 12.04 once I have the full back-up made, so this only needs to be a simple, do-once solution that works. It does not need to be a perfect long-term solution that I can use repeatedly with incremental backups etc.

Your help would be really appreciated.

Many thanks in advance,

Bag.

[SteveRiley]

After you log in, drop to a Konsole and try to cp someplace, as I mentioned in the other thread. I'd suggest copying to a folder on your hard drive outside /home, to avoid any potential interactions with USB problems.

First make the directory:

sudo mkdir /save

Then take ownership of that:

sudo chown $USER:$USER /save

Now copy files:

cp -r $HOME/* /save

Let us know how this works.

[67GTA]

I hate to highjack, but have a stupid question. I assume once you log in the data in NOT encrypted anymore? I usually just tar up my ./home directory, but was afraid to advise because I know nothing about how encryption works. The sounded like the OP was having problems with file/folder permissions. The "p" option when creating a tarball will preserve permissions. Using something like

sudo tar -cvzpf /home/Backup.tgz

will zip up your ./home directory into a tarball named Backup.tgz.

[bag]

Steve,

OK, so I did that. Seemed to do most things - but threw up the following complaints...

~$ cp -r $HOME/* /data/save
cp: cannot open `/home/markh/Dropbox/.dropbox.cache/.~5958074485471609210HI' for reading: Input/output error
cp: cannot open `/home/markh/Dropbox/.dropbox.cache/.~2140134469733055943HI' for reading: Input/output error
cp: cannot open `/home/markh/Pictures/thumbnails-digikam.db-journal.old' for reading: Input/output error
cp: cannot open `/home/markh/Pictures/digikam4.db-journal.old' for reading: Input/output error

To be fair, I dont' think I need them. Dropbox will sync later on its own, and the digikam files are older versions. However, I noted that it did not seem to copy across any config files. In particular, I really need to back up my thunderbird folder which contains all my e-mails etc.

What would be the command to back those up as well?

67GTA - Thanks for your comments. Will try that later if you don't mind - although can you tell me if it will pick up the config files too?

Thanks all,

Bag.

[SteveRiley]

Have you checked whether everything else in your original home folder was copied successfully? The bits mentioned in the error messages are, as you surmised, not important to preserve.

[SteveRiley]

Oh wait, I see you mentioned that config files weren't copied. I forget -- where does Thunderbird store its config files?

[SecretCode]

~$ cp -r $HOME/* /data/save
...

However, I noted that it did not seem to copy across any config files. In particular, I really need to back up my thunderbird folder which contains all my e-mails etc.

Yes, I think "$HOME/*" selects all non-hidden files in $HOME. (The subtleties of globbing.) You clearly need the hidden (.dot) files as well!

Any command that just specifies a directory not "*" should be fine, so

cp -r $HOME/ /data/save

should work (not tested). The tar command above should be fine.
Or

cp -r $HOME/* $HOME/.* /data/save

Personally I prefer rsync ... I do some of my backups with a command like this

rsync -Prh --out-format "%i%12l %M %n%L" --stats /drive/DATA/Documents/ /media/GoFlexA1/Backup/ -t --links --safe-links --one-file-system

... but you certainly don't need all those options!

rsync -Prti $HOME/ /data/save/

should be sufficient for you.

[SecretCode]

I forget -- where does Thunderbird store its config files?

I bet you can guess ... ~/.thunderbird
(The other guess might be ~/.mozilla/thunderbird but I don't have any thunderbird files there.)

[SteveRiley]

Yes, I think "$HOME/*" selects all non-hidden files in $HOME. (The subtleties of globbing.) You clearly need the hidden (.dot) files as well!

Any command that just specifies a directory not "*" should be fine

Duh! You're absolutely right. Silly me. I just tested it, works fine when omitting the asterisk.