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About backup and switching to a different distro (programming.dev)

submitted 5 months ago by Mihies@programming.dev to c/linux@programming.dev

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I'm going to move away from Windows into Linux and have some strategical questions, among others how do you handle backups/restore and how do you switch distros.

There are two main questions (in case of catastrophic failure or transition):

How do you reinstall your apps? I'm considering ansible for that - have all my installs (as much as possible) done through ansible playbooks.
How do you recover your backup data? Just copy from backup to home directory probably won't do when it comes to a different distro, or? Here I'm considering doing ZFS snapshosts (ZFS pool/datasets would be used for my home directory) to my backup server but not sure how to recover it in case of switching to a different distro. It should be copy in the case of system restoration I guess.

Any other recommendations?

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[–] menel@snikket.de 2 points 5 months ago

@Mihies@programming.dev
I do it completely manually. Using Linux distros for 15y but never touched ansible. I just reinstall stuff like one does in that distribution..
I've got complete system snapshots via btrfs and backup them away with restic...
ZFS would work too or course.

But I don't reinstall my stuff all the time. Generally it just works and keeps working. But I wonder if setting up a system and copying data from the backup really is that time consuming, that working with ansible and what not it worth it.
Depends heavily on how often one uses it I guess 👍