Backing up messages from KMail

[David Fletcher]

On Tuesday 08 September 2009 12:30:56 Jonas Norlander wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 12:51 PM, David Fletcher<dave at thefletchers.net> 
wrote:
> > Now, the reason for keeping the copy of /etc/?
> >
> > Amongst other things, it contains the login IDs and passwords for all
> > your users!
>
> One thing to point out is that your "backup" of /etc is just a copy
> and if you by accident deleted /etc/passwd and your script is run it
> will delete passwd from your copy to. I would tar up /etc the same way
> as you do with your home folder. With that you several copies of /etc
> if something goes wrong and you don't notice it first after several
> days.
>
> / Jonas

Jonas,

Thanks for taking the trouble to read my posts and comment.

I see your point, and yes it is always a danger with rsync --delete, but if 
backups are taken with reasonable regularity, all the content of /etc/ will 
be preserved in a previous backup (the name of which incorporates the date 
and time to prevent accidental over writing).

So in the case of myself and most other home users who rarely if ever add 
users to the system after installation and set up, that should be perfectly 
good enough. On a busy corporate system, it may well be different.

Dave