backup systems. (Use Amanda!!)

[richb at pioneer.ci.net (Rich Braun)]

Derek Atkins observed...
> Can Amanda be set up so it only backs up _changed_ files?  Why should
> I waste 2GB of backup on files that I can easily restore by
> re-installing my machine?  I want to backup my _data_ and
> _configuration_, not my installation....

Actually, that'd be quite easy to do.  Amanda lets you supply an exclude list,
if you specify Gnu tar format in the config files, so all you'd have to do is
generate a list of all such files by issuing a "find -not -newer xxx.yyy"
command (where xxx.yyy is the name of a file whose creation timestamp is the
start of your configuration).

An alternative would be to run a full backup once, and then specify "nofull"
in the configuration so it never does a full backup.

I've contemplated that for my music libraries, but what happens as my
collection grows (we buy batches of CDs, and rip them at 256kbits) is that I
update the ID3 tags on enough of the old ones that I wind up wanting to
re-generate the archives.  I kinda do that with my Linux configs as well, so I
wouldn't be able to use your approach as easily.  But your approach would be
quite compatible with Amanda.

-rich