<html><head/><body><html><head></head><body>For the record, I only use a system image for windows machines where there isn't any other option. For Linux recovery, I install the minimal OS with an ssh-server, restore from backups, then install the remaining packages from a list of installed packages created nightly, just prior to the backup job. I used to backup everything on an OS, but changed that about 2 yrs ago. <br>
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Don't forget to backup crontabs too. When I'm selective about what gets backed up, I'm extremely cautious about getting everything that is customized, logged or contains performance data that would be useful for determining a root cause for any problems on the box.<br>
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As an example, the entire backup for an email gateway that I run is about 50MB (settings, configs, crontabs), while the backup for the full email system is about 20GB due to the extra IMAP data that it contains. <br><br><div class="gmail_quote">David Tomaschik <david@systemoverlord.com> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<div dir="ltr">On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 11:32 AM, Jonathan Meek <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jonathan.l.meek@gmail.com" target="_blank">jonathan.l.meek@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br /><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div>Thanks for sharing your thoughts on backups. I hope I didn't give the impression that all was lost when my hard drive appears to have failed. I had everything backed up ahead of time but since I got it to boot one last time and it prompted me to backup I figured I would back it up since it is only data that I backup off my rigs. (Haven't started backing up any configuration stuff but that's for another time when I am not working full force on a master's degree)<br />
<br /></div>But in the future plan to implement the suggestions I see here. <br /><br />Regards, <br /><br />Jonathan</div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div style="style">Hi Jonathan,</div><div style="style"><br /></div><div style="style">I hope you didn't take it that I was specifically targeting your post -- I just happened to read your post while waiting on something else to finish and it inspired me to write a message I'd been meaning to for a while. The topic of how to "burn in", "test", "repair", etc., hard drives has been a frequent topic of discussion and I wanted to share my feelings on it.</div>
<div style="style"><br /></div><div style="style">Unlike JD and Ron (and others), I don't bother with anything resembling a system image for desktop systems. I backup a list of installed packages and the contents of /etc, to be sure, but for the most part, I assume I'll be doing a reinstall in my restore strategy, and I'm ok with that strategy. For servers, of course, images are nice, because downtime is more critical there.</div>
<div style="style"><br /></div><div style="style">Good luck with the master's degree!</div><div style="style"><br /></div><div style="style">David</div></div></div></div>
<p style="margin-top: 2.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; border-bottom: 1px solid #000"></p><pre style="white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap:break-word; font-family: monospace; margin-top: 0px"><hr /><br />Ale mailing list<br />Ale@ale.org<br /><a href="http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale">http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale</a><br />See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at<br /><a href="http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo">http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo</a><br /></pre></blockquote></div><br>
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