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How to backup in linux

Using rsync, allows to have incremental backup.

The basic command is:

rsync -[flag] –exclude={“/exclude/pathOne/”,”/exclude/thisPathToo/”} [source/to/backup] [destination/to/store/backup]

Run this command to backup in /mnt/SSD1/backups

time sudo rsync -aAXvz –delete –exclude={“/dev/”,”/proc/”,”/sys/”,”/tmp/”,”/run/”,”/mnt/”,”/media/*”,”/lost+found”} / /mnt/SSD1/backups/main_backup

Alternative with tar to create a compress backup

time sudo tar -czvf /mnt/SSD1/backups/$backup_name.tar.gz –exclude={“/dev/”,”/proc/”,”/sys/”,”/tmp/”,”/run/”,”/mnt/”,”/media/*”,”/lost+found”} /

Flag

flag	action
-a	archive mode (preserves permissions, ownership…)
-A	Preserve ACLs (Access Control Lists)
-X	Preserve extended attributes
-v	Verbose output (optional, for seeing progress)
-z	Make it faster (compress the transfer, but not the final files)
–delete	Make an incremental backup,

If using rsync over ssh, you might want to use the --numeric-ids flag

Restore file from backup

To restore with rsync, run the same command but reverse the source and destination:

sudo rsync -aAXvz –delete –exclude={“/dev/”,”/proc/”,”/sys/”,”/tmp/”,”/run/”,”/mnt/”,”/media/*”,”/lost+found”} /mnt/SSD1/backups/main_backup /

If the system is not accessible, a backup can be made from a live preview of the os. In that case:

1. Create a usb key with the image of your os
2. Boot into it and select the live preview
3. Create a mount point to the device containing the backup

   mkdir /mnt/drive

4. Find the name of the device with lsblk
5. Mount the device with:

   mount /dev/device/partition/name /mnt/drive

6. Run the command:

   sudo rsync -aAXvz –delete –exclude={“/dev/”,”/proc/”,”/sys/”,”/tmp/”,”/run/”,”/mnt/”,”/media/*”,”/lost+found”} /mnt/SSD1/backups/main_backup /