Backup – What is Safe to Exclude for a Full System Backup?

backupcachethumbnails

I'm looking for a list which paths/files are safe to exclude for a full system/home backup.

Considering that I have a list of installed packages.

  • /home/*/.thumbnails
  • /home/*/.cache
  • /home/*/.mozilla/firefox/*.default/Cache
  • /home/*/.mozilla/firefox/*.default/OfflineCache
  • /home/*/.local/share/Trash

  • /home/*/.gvfs/

  • /tmp/

  • /var/tmp/
  • not real folders but can cause severe problems when 'restoring'
    • /dev
    • /proc
    • /sys

What about…

  • /var/ in general?
  • /var/backups/ – can get quite large
  • /var/log/ – does not require much space and can help for later comparison
  • /lost+found/

Best Answer

When I rsync my system to a backup partition, I exclude these:

--exclude=/dev/* \
--exclude=/home/*/.gvfs \
--exclude=/home/*/.mozilla/firefox/*/Cache \
--exclude=/home/*/.cache/chromium \
--exclude=/home/*/.thumbnails \
--exclude=/media/* \
--exclude=/mnt/* \
--exclude=/proc/* \
--exclude=/sys/* \
--exclude=/tmp/* \
--exclude=/home/*/.local/share/Trash \
--exclude=/etc/fstab \
--exclude=/var/run/* \
--exclude=/var/lock/* \
--exclude=/lib/modules/*/volatile/.mounted \
--exclude=/var/cache/apt/archives/* \

This way I am able to boot into the backup partition the same way I can boot to the original one.

So to sum up, I would suggest

  • not excluding /{dev,proc,media,...} themselves, just their contents

  • excluding /var/{run,lock}, and especially the big /var/cache/apt/archives/

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