How to Backup My Kubuntu 14.04

[logan01]

I have an older, but large enough capacity (282GB free space), external hard drive. I would like to backup my Kubuntu 14.04 and personal files. How do I go about doing this?

Thanks

[dequire]

I have an older, but large enough capacity (282GB free space), external hard drive. I would like to backup my Kubuntu 14.04 and personal files. How do I go about doing this?

Thanks

The easiest way would be to just backup your Home folder, including hidden "." files.

[logan01]

I was under the impression if I backed the whole thing up and happen to lose Kubuntu, I could reinstall it from my backup. True or not that simple?

[Snowhog]

If you want a backup that allows for restoration of a complete system -- what you have before the full backup -- then I would strongly suggest using Clonezilla. It's free and can be booted from a Live USB or Live CD. It's what I use.

[logan01]

If you want a backup that allows for restoration of a complete system -- what you have before the full backup -- then I would strongly suggest using Clonezilla. It's free and can be booted from a Live USB or Live CD. It's what I use.

Ok I'll read up on it. I believe I still have a "live" Kubuntu flash drive.

[elijathegold]

For my data backup I use backintime which is installed by running sudo apt install backintime-kde. It's effectively a very nice front end to rsync that allows you to schedule regular backups of your data. It's quite light on disk space as unchanged files are only hard linked to the previous backup.

I tend not to do a image backup with Clonezilla as I am boring enough that I know my software list off by heart and may as well just install the latest versions from the repository rather than restore them and then update.

[logan01]

For my data backup I use backintime which is installed by running sudo apt install backintime-kde. It's effectively a very nice front end to rsync that allows you to schedule regular backups of your data. It's quite light on disk space as unchanged files are only hard linked to the previous backup.

I tend not to do a image backup with Clonezilla as I am boring enough that I know my software list off by heart and may as well just install the latest versions from the repository rather than restore them and then update.

Is this something I do with my external HDD plugged into my pc and then now and then, it copies all my system / personal data to the external drive?

[Qqmike]

I tend not to do a image backup with Clonezilla as I am boring enough that I know my software list off by heart and may as well just install the latest versions from the repository rather than restore them and then update.

Exactly my strategy and philosophy (but logan01 didn't ask us for philosophy!) I keep a list of software to install, tips, notes, to-do's (printed on paper). I only backup my data in /home--and I do that simply by copying it to a thumb drive (actually a few thumb drives for redundancy). Besides, IMO, it is good practice to practice installing your system now and then! That's my opinion that you didn't ask for ...

[logan01]

Exactly my strategy and philosophy (but logan01 didn't ask us for philosophy!) I keep a list of software to install, tips, notes, to-do's (printed on paper). I only backup my data in /home--and I do that simply by copying it to a thumb drive (actually a few thumb drives for redundancy). Besides, IMO, it is good practice to practice installing your system now and then! That's my opinion that you didn't ask for ...

I must agree however since this was pointed at me, you must be having a good laugh. What was my initial install thread; 40-50 pages? Are you out of your mind?

[Qqmike]

Ha! Good one (on me)! Yeah, 40-50 pages of notes is a bit too much "practice."

[elijathegold]

Is this something I do with my external HDD plugged into my pc and then now and then, it copies all my system / personal data to the external drive?

If you want a something you can just put on a new hard disk and just start using it, then Clonezilla is the best way to go.

I have backintime backing up my /home across the network every three hours, after the initial backup, I don't really notice it. And once every few days when I plug a specific disk in, it will back up to that as soon as it's mounted. You can set it up with the root permissions to back up things outside your home directory if you want to.

I must agree however since this was pointed at me, you must be having a good laugh. What was my initial install thread; 40-50 pages? Are you out of your mind?

It gets easier around about the 17th time.

[wizard10000]

Here's how I do it - I don't back up software, ever. Software can be reinstalled easily from repositories; my data is where I am religious about backups.

I have a nightly rsync job that backs up my home directory, root's home directory and /etc to an external drive. How do I get packages reinstalled? Glad you asked

I have another nightly cron job that does this -

dpkg --get-selections > /home/username/installed_programs.txt

If I need to reload the entire machine I've already got my personal data and root's and the system's configuration backed up, right? I reinstall the distribution and restore my home directory. Then - as root:

• First, I make sure apt sources are configured correctly. This is pretty easy since I don't use any repos that weren't provided by my distribution.
• Next, I do this:

  apt update
  dpkg --set-selections < /home/username/installed_programs.txt
  apt-get dselect-upgrade

• Then I restore root's home directory and any files I've changed in /etc

Bare metal to completely restored system? About an hour.

There are some gotchas here, though. Packages that are not available will cause the process to fail spectacularly; so making sure you have the correct repos in /etc/apt/sources.list is critical - but we did back up /etc before we blew things away so it shouldn't be hard to recreate your sources.list, right? All you'd need to do is restore it from backup

Good luck -

[elijathegold]

That's how I do my reinstall also; but only id I remember to --get-selections before the disk splatting. I should get round to doing what you do.

[vsmmath]

I love this. I am used to Clonezilla and have a live cd with me. Good that I gave a search before asking in a new thread.