backing up /sys

[Bob McClure Jr]

On Tue, Jun 28, 2005 at 02:28:15PM -0700, Rick Stevens wrote:
> Bob McClure Jr wrote:
> >I'm in the process of checking out a CD/DVD-based backup package.
> >
> >http://www.bluehaze.com.au/unix/cdbkup.html
> >
> >In my first test, I noticed in the error log a bunch of carps about
> >file sizes changing in /sys.  I know that /proc is a pseudo filesystem
> >comprising nothing but hooks into the kernel, and I know that I don't
> >want to back that up.  /sys looks like the same sort of thing, full of
> >directories that take up 0 bytes, down to files that ls reports as
> >4096 bytes.
> >
> >Is it safe to assume I don't want to backup /sys?
> 
> Yes.  That's the infamous "sysfs" stuff.  You want to back up the
> directory name, but not its contents.  Also beware of some "dev" stuff
> (from "devfs" and "udev").
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> - Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
> - VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
> -                                                                    -
> -      Always remember you're unique, just like everyone else.       -
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------

That's what I figured.

I'm still deciding whether I want to continue just backing up root,
home, etc, var, and usr/local, and restore that on to a freshly
installed system, or to make a complete backup from which I can
restore to a bare-metal (or possibily minimally installed) system.

You won't be surprised at the reason for my sudden interest in this.
Yeah, two disk crashes in the last month.

Cheers,
-- 
Bob McClure, Jr.             Bobcat Open Systems, Inc.
robertmcclure at earthlink.net  http://www.bobcatos.com
God doesn't have (or need) a Plan B.