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TIMESHIF TCredit:https://github.com/teejee2008/timeshift

Keep your Linux install backed up

Nick Peers reveals the tools, techniques and tips you need to protect everything from personal files to your entire Linux installation.

OUR EXPERT

Nick Peers has been an ardent backup fanatic since spending one Christmas holiday manually recovering hundreds of text files one at a time from the command line back in the late ’90s.

Mint users will notice the version of Déjà Dup Backups offered in the main repositories isn’t the latest – that said, there’s little difference between it and the rather bloated 900MBplus Flatpak version, which is why we recommend you install the older System Package version instead.

NAVIGATE BACK IN TIME 1 2

MINT’S BUILT-IN BACKUP TOOL

Redo Rescue saves each partition as a compressed IMG file, along with a textbased REDO file containing details of the drive structure that Redo requires should you need to restore the backup.

To make changes to your Timeshift configuration, either click Wizard to run through the setup wizard again, or Settings to reconfigure specific areas of your configuration, including areas not covered by the wizard, such as include/ exclude filters.

BACK UP SECURELY TO THE CLOUD

OUR EXPERT

Mint users will notice the version of Déjà Dup Backups offered in the main repositories isn’t the latest – that said, there’s little difference between it and the rather bloated 900MBplus Flatpak version, which is why we recommend you install the older System Package version instead.

Linux Mint ships with a file-based backup tool – MintBackup – that offers two separate backups in one app: Personal Data backs up the contents of your Home directory, while Software Selection covers the apps installed on your PC through Software Manager. You can include apps installed elsewhere in the list by issuing the following command in the terminal before opening Backup: $ dpkg --get-selections > package_list.list

It’s always a good idea to keep at least one copy of your data stored in a separate location from your PC. Cloud storage offers the most convenient way to do this, but there are question marks over security. One way to get around this is to wrap your backup files in another layer of encryption before uploading them, and the simplest way to do that is with a tool called Duplicati (www.duplicati.com).

Nick Peers has been an ardent backup fanatic since spending one Christmas holiday manually recovering hundreds of text files one at a time from the command line back in the late ’90s.

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Linux Format
August 2023
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