Backup

[Napoleon M]

Which program is best backup for filesystem, preservation of hard links metadata

dd

tar

rsync?

Anyone explain which is best in each case.

Thanks

Napoleon 

[Ski Kacoroski]

I have used both successfully for soft and hard links.  One thing I found is the some file systems (e.g. fat32, some online services) don't support them so make sure you format the external ssd correctly.  If I have to back up to a system that doesn't support them, I have a simple shell script that lists all the links in a file which I backup so I can recreate them.  Just check the docs for tar and sync and verify you got what you expected.

Cheers,

Ski

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[Bri Hatch]

Backing up to what? Same disk? Secondary disk? External disk? Remote machine? Do you want a single copy or various historical versions?

If you want to be able to go 'back in time' then if you're using a snapshot-capable filesystem like zfs then you just make a snapshot of the whole fs with a single command and it's safe and available. Or you may be able to configure it automatically, e.g. with the zfs-auto-snapshot and you can have them happen magically for you. This would be most space efficient because you don't copy any data that hasn't changed.

If you're not on a snapshot-capable system and want something similar, then rsnapshot may be for you. It is magic around rsync that makes copies of files on a schedule, and tries to be space-efficient by using hard links where it can, so a file that has not changed is only present once in the backup. However a single bit flip in the file will mean an entire new copy will need to be made, so less efficient than a fs-level snapshot. rsnapshot could run locally, or to an external disk or other system entirely.

If you just want something quick-n-dirty, then rsync from your source to your dest will give you a good copy.

If you explain your use case more (why specifically are you interested in hard links - that's an implementation, not a goal) we may be able to help more.

BRI HATCH
BOFH

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"Life on Earth can't get more complex because that
would require engergy, and the sun doesn't exist."
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[Napoleon M]

On Mon, Nov 6, 2023 at 8:19 PM Napoleon M <napo...@gmail.com> wrote:

So I got a secondary 500GB SSD to backup my home/. My primary is a m.2 nvme partition. It has root + home default scheme. I posted a image of my screen as my system shuts down in an earlier email. "Failed to unmount /old root"

"Failed to unmount/oldroot/dev device or resource busy"

I was thinking that this meant some process was operating and preventing shutdown, so I went in to my .cache folder deleted a couple unused apps and my browser cache. Thinking that may be a good idea. I also was looking into other Ubuntu issues with shutdown and systems from a few years ago and recently. I may just reinstall that was the idea for the backup to use the second drive. My partition scheme on my main price is curious. I have about 2MB free space on the beginning of the drive and the end. /nvme0n1p1 is 522 MB FAT, 

/nvme0np2 is 4.3GB fat, the partition 3 is ext4 holds filesystem and home+ root - 991GB. Swap partition is partition 4 at 4.3 GB.

I was able to boot up a rescue disk to access everything, I try to fire up email from that if you want to know more like screen shots or attachments.

My only other option is to backup /home and reinstall then copy over the/home and try to make it seamless. 

Thank, 

Napo

[Napoleon M]

This is Disk and terminal from the /boot

[Nimret Sandhu]

I back-up data across all my devices to the cloud (note we have many more computers than humans in our household :)

https://www.idrive.com/

They have clients for the various OSes, devices, etc.

Nimret

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[Napoleon M]

I can install fresh with the latest nvidia drivers, that may be what is causing the problem. The refresh install option is supposed to preserve my /home and install/remove everything else; all my snaps, flatpak, and user installed apt deb packages. I really don't want to reinstall everything and wish there is a different way. Someone mention I install separate to the other drive and copy over the files I want to have. Hence is tar or sync better across drives like that.  The other option is to repair and figure out why its broke, maybe a bad bootloader, bios, or kernel.

[Napoleon M]

my system wont shutdown because it is waiting for process systemd-udev, systemd-udevd

[Napoleon M]

https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/udev.conf.html#