On Fri, Sep 13, 2024 at 10:54 AM Michael via PLUG-discuss <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:

chatgpt is telling me to rsync with...

sudo rsync -aAXv --delete --exclude={"/home/bmike1/.cache","/home/bmike1/.local/share/Trash"} /home/ /media/$USER/rsync/

and to restore with:

sudo rsync -aAXv --delete --exclude={"/home/bmike1/.cache","/home/bmike1/.local/share/Trash"} /media/$USER/rsync/ /home/

the save stage ran correctly but will the restore run correctly?

It should but in your command composition, rsync will pick up other directories under /home/.  

Although on the restore command these options (--delete --exclude={"/home/bmike1/.cache","/home/bmike1/.local/share/Trash"} ) do not make sense to me.  A

Also, why do you need 'sudo'? 

For my backups, I run the rsync commands directly from the user's home directory e.g. /home/bmike1/ 

FWIW please read the man page for -a and -A/-X nuances + logging the backup to record what went right/wrong.

(Note the changes in bold. Also, -a will not work for backup media (USB drives) formatted with Microsoft files systems (vfat, exFAT, NTFS)

Backup:

cd $HOME

rsync -aP --log-file=FILE --delete --exclude={"$HOME/.cache","$HOME/.local/share/Trash"} $HOME/ /media/$USER/rsync/

Restore:

cd $HOME
rsync -aP --log-file=FILE /media/$USER/rsync/ $HOME/

Create a user e.g. testuser, create some files under the home directory, and do a test drive and verify the results of the backup and restore.

HTH

Arun Khan