[sf-lug] What files are required to back up my "configuration"?

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Michael Shiloh (michaelshiloh1010 at gmail.com):

> Agreed.
> 
> Forget the original question. I now have a new question:
> 
> If I want to restore my setup to a fresh installation, is it
> sufficient to copy all the .??* files and directories in my home
> directory, or do I need more?

Ah, interesting question.  Basically, where on my system are the files I
would wish to preserve?

The best way to know the answer to that is to know your system, i.e.,
keep track of which directories you customised files in since it was
built.  As it happens, some years ago I produced an exhaustive list of
those locatons for my server, for use in backup.  Yours will (almost
certainly) be a small subset of that.

(It's barely possible that you've modified some locations not listed,
but I doubt it.)

The list (of directories plus one individual fuile, menu.lst, is on my
'How to do a full backup and restore of linuxmafia.com' page,
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Admin/linuxmafia.com-backup.html , and is:

/root                        Root user's home directory (includes above files)
/etc                         System configuration files
/usr/lib/cgi-bin             CGI scripts (omit PHP binaries)
/var/lib/mysql               MySQL database files (dump if not queiscent)
/boot/grub/menu.lst          GRUB bootloader configuration
/var/spool/exim4             Exim and SA-Exim internal files
/var/spool/news              NNTP news spool for Leafnode
/var/spool/mail              SMTP mail spool
/var/lib/mailman/archives    Mailing list archives for Mailman
/var/lib/mailman/data        Mailing list state and other data
/var/lib/mailman/lists       Mailing list definitions for Mailman
/var/lib/mailman/nntp        Mailing list NNTP gateway data
/var/lib/mailman/qfiles      Mailing list in-process data
/usr/local                   Locally installed files and records
/var/www                     Public http, ftp, rsync tree
/home                        Non-root users' home trees


For your workstation, obviously a bunch of those server-role trees won't 
exist, unless e.g., you are running the MySQL database engine for some
reason.  You probably have at most:

/root                        Root user's home directory (includes above files)
/etc                         System configuration files
/boot/grub/menu.lst          GRUB bootloader configuration
/usr/local                   Locally installed files and records
/home                        Non-root users' home trees

Specifically about /home, you are quite reasonably raising the question
of which files within /home to preserve.  Ideally, the right answer is
'all of them'.  That is, for gosh sakes, it's your home directory, so
you want to preserve what's there because it's your stuff.

Complications can arise if you attempt to carry forward your entire set
of home directory dotfiles while migrating to a significantly different
distro, because you might accidentally attempt to use, say, GNOME
dotfile directories from a newer version of GNOME on the replacement
distro that has an older version of GNOME.  GNOME dotfiles tend to break
backwards compatibility.  There may be other dotfiles and dotfile
subtrees that fail to work properly if migrated to a significantly
different distro.


Incidentally, the glob ~/.??* will probably catch all dotfiles and
dotfile subdirectories but is not guaranteed to do so, because of the
possibililty of dotfiles with one-character names.