BackupPC on a single machine

I'm currently running Fed27 on my home machine and BackupPC is the only backup software I can find on it. I've downloaded the BackupPC documentation and gone through it to some extent, but I have two problems with it. First, it appears to be written for network administrators, which is above my level of expertise, and second, what little I can understand looks like it's a network-only solution, and therefore completely unsuited for my purposes.

The backup system I had in Fed26 had a black safe icon in the menu, and it worked very well, but it wasn't installed when I went to 27. Now I don't know what to do. This is especially true because my Dell Inspiron 620 is getting a little long in the tooth and I'm thinking about upgrading -- but I can't do that without a way to migrate my files. Can anyone help? I'll even settle for a pointer to the right forum, if this is the wrong one, although I am hoping for more than that.

If you are not on a network, you really ought to back up your personal data to an external drive, so that it can be safely re installed should anything happen to your main machine.

For that, you can just copy all your files to it; use rsync if you want incremental backups.

Originally Posted by fatmac If you are not on a network, you really ought to back up your personal data to an external drive, so that it can be safely re installed should anything happen to your main machine.

I KNOW! It's making me very nervous.

For that, you can just copy all your files to it; use rsync if you want incremental backups.

I do have an external drive, also a second internal drive; that's what I used the last time I upgraded. But now that I have the external, that would obviously be easier. I know I would run rsync as root, but I don't know what directories not to copy, and I know there are some. /proc, for example, has some "files" that are actually just system link points (if that's the right term) and don't copy well to an offline file system. I guess I could just copy the /home directory, but I worry that I'd be losing system updates I've made since initial installation.

Go to "Sotware" and type in backup - you'll get a list of what's available; probably deja-dup. Not one of my favourites, but if it has your data, just re-install it.
You can of course use dnf to query in a terminal - you'll get a lot more options.

As an aside, I only ever backup my data, not the system. Easy enough to redo the system, and doesn't usually take long to figure out what I missed when I re-installed packages. And I always make sure the data are in a format I can read anywhere, easily. rsync fits the bill nicely as does cp (for example).
deja-dup use duplicity as its backend - gloriously appropriate name IMHO.

Originally Posted by syg00 Go to "Sotware" and type in backup - you'll get a list of what's available; probably deja-dup. Not one of my favourites, but if it has your data, just re-install it. You can of course use dnf to query in a terminal - you'll get a lot more options. As an aside, I only ever backup my data, not the system. Easy enough to redo the system, and doesn't usually take long to figure out what I missed when I re-installed packages. And I always make sure the data are in a format I can read anywhere, easily. rsync fits the bill nicely as does cp (for example). deja-dup use duplicity as its backend - gloriously appropriate name IMHO.

Yes, deja-dup was what I remembered, and it looks like duplicity uses rsync as a backend in turn, so no worries. But if you have a recommendation for another frontend as easy to use as deja-dup, I'd like to try it. I do see your point about only backing up personal data rather than the whole system, though.

I'm the wrong person to ask re GUIs.
The only value of a backup is being able to (easily) restore from it. It was my attempts some years ago on a different distro to the backup machine that gave me such a jaundiced view of deju-dup/duplicity.
I encourage you to do your own tests - maybe things have improved, maybe I'm just too dumb to be able to use it.

Originally Posted by syg00 I'm the wrong person to ask re GUIs. The only value of a backup is being able to (easily) restore from it. It was my attempts some years ago on a different distro to the backup machine that gave me such a jaundiced view of deju-dup/duplicity. I encourage you to do your own tests - maybe things have improved, maybe I'm just too dumb to be able to use it.

Well, I've been pretty lucky so far, I guess; the only time I've had to restore from a backup was when I changed machines. But I'm pretty sure it worked okay for me that one time. Still, you make a good point. I'll do some testing and make sure.