What to backup and how?
 

I seem to have solved the basic problems I had when installing Mandrake Linux 9.1, but the first few times I had system crashes which took down everything and destroyed the boot capability of the HD (not even booting from floppy would give me access to the original system anymore). As it seems, a re-install was the only option.

Just in case something like this happens again: what do I need to know about backups? More precisely, what files and directories should I backup and what else do I need to do to get something resembling a Windows rescue disk? Preferably I'd get something with which to re-install the boot block (something like sys c: under DOS/Windows), and directories which I'd simply play back from a CD - if that's at all possible.

The Mandrake Backup utility saves the /etc directory and the user files, but nothing more (unless I specify other directories, but which?), and furthermore it doesn't work with my CD recorder (seeks media eternally) even though K3B works perfectly. I could use K3B for backups, but of course I need to know what to backup at all.

Can anybody give me a reasonably detailed list and howto (or point to an existing one)?

Robin

I would like to have some suggestions to about what files people usually backup

And to answer a little bit of bitpickers question..

I wrote my own little (really noob) shell script that copies specific files and compress them to a tarball/gzipped file,

Just make a note on the sevices you are using and the configuration files you have modified for ex,

/etc/rc.d/ ## startup files
/home/$user
xfree86 conf files
/etc/samba something/conf/smb.conf ## samba

Sorry if I couldn't be of anymore help but im new to linux myself