Thank God for backups!

[Daniel Carrera]

Tab Gilbert wrote:
> NEVER use as backup folder the / !!! 

Well, what's the point in backing up / in the first place? Especially if 
the backup the goes back into /var/backup/. That would make the backup 
grow exponentially.

>  This MADE MY SYSTEM UNACCESSIBLE !!!!
> 
>  Everything stopped immediately to work when I clicked
>  'Backup NOW';

Backing up slows down the system because it requires a lot of disk access.

> it filled up the hard disk and will not reboot

You should check for proper disk space before backing up.

> tried Knoppix and deleted some junk to free up some space

Go to /var/backup/ and delete whatever you find there.

>>So I logged as root and chmod to 755 my root folder.
>>That worked.

That should be the permission of / anyways.

> is beyond my ability and i think i just hosed my system trying to make
> a backup. :(

Just delete the contents of /var/backup

> all i can say, from using ubuntu for six
> months, is the default settings of a program really should not do bad
> things like that.

The default settings of the program is not to backup the / directory. 
The default setting is to backup /home and /usr/local which is a 
sensible choice.

Daniel.
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