Backing up Ubuntu

[Ralf Mardorf]

I can't comment on Windows and Mac, but AFAIK for Linux there's no such
snapshot option available as for FreeBSD.

What you want, most likely is supported by rsync, but you first need to
shut down your Linux session and e.g. backup the complete install from a
live media.

I'm not using rsync, since I'm in favour of

sudo tar --xattrs -czf

or

sudo cp -ai

and I keep several copies on different external hard disks. However,
you also need to shut down your session and to run tar or cp from a
live media, too.

While rsync much likely provides a history of backups and latest
backups might not be as time consuming, it's still odd. Using tar or cp
is less prone regarding user errors and it's anyway better to spread
backups over several external hard disks.

However, any backup strategy using basic command line options is way
more secure than using special tools. Using a command such as 'dd'
is useful to backup the MBR, but MBRs backups don't gain that much as a
lot of people guess, let alone that for anything else 'dd' is
completely useless, if you want to avoid grotesk issues.

You probably want to go the learning curve that is required to use
rsync, if not consider to do it the same way as I do and use tar or cp.

Don't use special tools, unless you want to check the source code
to check what they actually do, for each update of a tool again and
again.