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On 10/03/2016 09:33 AM, Jeffrey L. Taylor wrote:
I am planning on a clean install (going from 13.1 to 42.2 Beta) on the root partition, leaving the home partition alone. I'm not doing complete backups because of limited space on the backup drive. I've room for a single full backup, both partitions. What is a reliable way?
"cp -a / /media/LinuxBackup/full" is what occurs to me. Is there a better way?
TIA, Jeffrey
That's a big jump, so you are wise to choose a clean install. Further, you MAY have to repartition if you had too small of a Root Partition in 13.1. But assuming no repartitioning problems, I would simply backup the /home partition and selected configurations from the /etc directory if you run your own mail server, web server media server, and things like Cups etc. Maybe copy all of /etc so some removeable media or something. If the budget will stand it, a spare/new hard drive in a usb disk caddy is nice. It will serve well in the future for backups as well. As for what tools to use? That could cause a huge chain of competing recommendations. I'd recommend what ever you are familiar with. I still use a package from a long time ago that allows me to stack compressed backups onto a NAS or a Tape or an external hard drive. (Its non-free so I won't mention it here, there are free equivalences). The Real Good news is that if you do NOT have to repartition, and /home is already a separate partition, your prior planning for this eventuality is likely to make the whole operation quite painless. Be careful during the install to not let it format /home, but to nuke and reformat the other partitions. When adding users to the system, add them in the same order so that their user id numbers match what is already in /home directories. Get it up and running before you copy over any config files from /etc. Then do one such copy-over at a time. -- After all is said and done, more is said than done. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org