Question: Making efficient backups on Debian?

Posted by Serge on Fri 10 Dec 2004 at 10:05

I was wondering what needs to be backed-up on a Debian system, without backing up too much, considering packages can be re-downloaded. Until now, I've been using this various pieces (amongst others) in my backup script, on a server that performs typical LAMP, DNS en email services.
dpkg --get-selections > /var/backups/apt-backup-selections

mysqldump -u root --password=$MYSQLROOTPW --all-databases --opt > "/var/backups/mysql-$DATE.sql"

tar --absolute-names --create -j --file $MOUNTDIR/$BACKUPDIR/backup-$DATE.tbz --exclude-from=$EXCLUDE $INCLUDE
After this I make remote stored backups of 
/etc 
/root 
/var/cache/bind 
/var/lib/dpkg 
/var/backups 
/var/www 
/usr/local

I somehow am in doubt whether this is enough, at least to the extent of the base system and the configurations. More specially, a good backup of the apt system seems important to be able to easily recover the host.
I should actually take the time to test a disaster recovery with this setup, but as I don't have a second Bytemark host handy, I'm keeping using this as a (bad) excuse :)

So what are other people here doing about their Debian host backups?


Serge

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This article is copyright 2004 Serge - please ask for permission to republish or translate.