[GTALUG] What Not To Backup

[John Moniz]

Hi everyone,

I'm backing up my system on a more regular basis and am trying to fine 
tune the files that I backup. I am looking for advice on what NOT to 
bother to backup on the /home directory.

I am using rsync (took a long time and lots of trials to figure out the 
man page - and still don't know 90% of it) and presently have the 
following on my exclude_list.txt:
(Note: multiple items shown on one line are just for readability, each 
line in the file only has one item)

tmp* TMP*
.cache* cache* Cache* CACHE* *CACHE *Cache *cache
.cookies* cookies*
Trash Trash* TRASH*
Junk* junk*
.gvfs
Backups backups
Crash*
.xsession-errors*
.macromedia
.thumbnails
.mozilla/firefox/*/thumbnails
*.corrupt
minidumps
.local/share/gvfs*

I'd love to exclude things that perhaps one would never use from a 
backup to rebuild a system after an accidental clean wipe of all data.

Similarly, any recommendations of what I should back up outside of 
/home? I am thinking of things like /etc/fstab, files that would make it 
easier to recover from a crash or to upgrade a distro.

Thanks for any advice.

John.