[Discuss] Backing up the entire filesystem

[Rich Pieri]

On Fri, 26 Oct 2018 05:15:51 -0700
Rich Braun <richb at pioneer.ci.net> wrote:

> The ext4 filesystem has been the mainstream default on most Linux
> distros since 2008. I’ve been using a large number of systems using

RHEL 7's default is XFS. SLES 12's and SLES 15's default is a mix of
Btrfs and XFS.

> this filesystem, and a lesser number with xfs, ever since. Never once
> have I had filesystem corruption like with previous filesystems;
> there are other far-more likely data loss scenarios (like, uh, human
> error).

I've been unfortunate, sure enough, but the instances of extent
corruption I've had to clean up were not due to user error. Regardless
of the causes, the tools available are incapable of salvaging corrupt
ext4 filesystems in that state. And since the tools don't do what they
need to do I will maintain that you use ext4 at your own risk.


> I have published a python package ‘secondshot’ to add a few
> capabilities on top of rsnapshot; see my repos on GitHub /
> dockerhub / pypi. (github.com/instantlinux).

Having recently-ish rebuilt my home server with full ZFS I have to say
that ZFS makes backups ridiculously easy. And quick.

-- 
Rich Pieri