Backup tool?

[Daniel Robitaille]

On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 19:21:13 +0100, Nuno Sousa <nunofgs at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi, sorry to barge in on the conversation like this, but is there a
> backup tool that only backs up preferences? Usually I like to backup
> my own stuff (and I take the chance to organize my hard-drive), so
> that isn't a problem... but I'd like to have some software saving my
> firefox, gnome, amule, xchat, etc, prefences on a weekly basis or
> something, so that if I need to reinstall (and I don't mind
> reinstalling, which is why I don't just backup the entire partition
> onto another drive), I could just install the needed applications and
> restore my preferences.
> Is there such a tool?

tar?  Do a tar file of your home directory, excluding most of the
large subdirectories (and firefox cache!). Then drop the tar file on a
cd-rw, ftp site, other hard drive, etc.   That should in theory covers
all your preferences, on a per user basis and shouldn't a very large
file.

There are so many different applications out there leaving behind
preferences files and directories, I wouldn't like to rely on a
software to know which ones to backup.  A blacket tar command of all
your .* files/directory is probably more complete.