[SOLVED] System backup

[ticojohn]

I have never performed a full system backup but have always backed up my /home directory using Grsync. I am now thinking about upgrading fro Jessie to Stretch and want to do a full backup first in case there are problems. This is the command I am trying to run but on execution NOTHING happens. Now error messages, nothing. Can somebody take a look at the command and tell me where I am going wrong?

Code: Select all

# rsync -aAXv --exclude={"/dev/*","/proc/*","/sys/*","/tmp/*","/run/*","/mnt/*","/media/*","/home/*/.thumbnails/*","/home/*/.cache/mozilla/*","/home/*/.cache/chromium/*","/home/*/.local/share/Trash/*","/lost+found"} / /media/john/5718-482B/Jessie_BU

The target is an external USB HDD formatted as vfat. Do I need to reformat the drive as ext4? It always worked with Grsync, but perhaps rsync will not write to vfat.

UPDATE: Doing some research and I think the problem is that the USB HDD is formatted as VFAT. I will reformat it to ext4 and see how thing go.

[ticojohn]

I found the problem. DUMB! At the root prompt root@user:/home/user# I then put in the command as # rsync . DOUBLE # caused the system to think it was a comment and so did not execute anything. HOW DUMB ! Anyway, got the backup.

[dilberts_left_nut]

VFAT is a poor target for a system backup - you will get the files, but no links, permissions or ownership metadata, so it will be effectively useless.

[ticojohn]

VFAT is a poor target for a system backup - you will get the files, but no links, permissions or ownership metadata, so it will be effectively useless.

Thanks for that response. I kind of figured that out and reformatted the USB as ext4. But the real problem I had was that I had an extra "#" in the rsync command so it was just ignored. Glad I changed the format to ext4 before actually getting it to work.