On Sat, 6 Jul 2019 at 22:07, Steve Mynott steve.mynott@gmail.com wrote:
GNU tar does have direct support for incremental backups see
These aren't backups as such, but snapshots of different systems (all of which based on a Pi). You could think of them as different branches from a version control point of view, but encompassing the entire O/S. (I have scripts which backup and restore SD cards as tarballs instead of disk images, because they result in much smaller and more flexible files - search this mailing list for "rpi-backup" and you'll see my starting point from a couple of years ago). So a raw Raspbian install will have several tweaks and installs for one project, and a new clean install several different tweaks for a different project. Sometimes it is useful to compare them - eg a problem I solved on one now needs solving on another - or I just want to recreate a project on a newer Raspbian version.
Also worth pointing out that visibility is the key - just because I made a change doesn't mean that with hindsight it was necessary, and over time I'll end up with packages installed that were never used. Knowing what they were makes it easier to make decisions about whether they should be installed or removed.
But it's probably *much* easier and more reliable to use an existing system like restic
I don't *think* restic will help me here but I will have a look as it would be a useful tool regardless.
Systems like restic and rsync are likely to be much faster than a homebrew system (although these are fun to write).
Agreed, and I won't deny that the latter is part of this...