Can you have the Linux root directory as the snapshot <source>?

Support
1

I am trying to back up a Linux box where the snapshot source is the Linux OS root directory.

When I try to get an estimate, this is what occurs:

sudo kopia snapshot estimate ‘/’
Analyzing …
Snapshot includes 0 file(s), total size 0 B

Snapshot excludes no files.
Snapshot excludes 1 directories. Examples:

  • .

Estimated upload time: 0s at 10 Mbit/s

Does Kopia support such a snapshot, or am I missing something with the source directory syntax?

Thanks!

2

You will have to exclude some dirs to make that work:

dev/**,tmp/**,proc/**

those dirs are transient and cannot be part of a snapshot. Especially dev and proc, since the contain virtual files, which are no regular files.

3

and /sys too.

(20 chars)

4

Hello Budy - thank you for the prompt reply! I’m wondering if the issue is related to my .kopiaignore syntax.

This is the .kopiaignore file’s contents - file permission is currently set to 777 for debug purposes.

boot/**
dev/**
home/shared_data/**
lib/**
lib64/**
lost+found/**
media/**
mnt/**
opt/**
proc/**
snap/**
swapfile/**
sys/**
tmp/**
usr/**
var/run/**
var/tmp/**

When I run these commands, kopia does not seem to pick up any files or directories (it should pick up some /home and /var directories.

Am I misunderstanding something about the syntax for directory and file excludes?

Thanks in advance for any insight you can provide!

$ sudo kopia snapshot estimate /
Analyzing …
Snapshot includes 0 file(s), total size 0 B

Snapshot excludes no files.
Snapshot excludes 1 directories. Examples:

  • .

Estimated upload time: 0s at 10 Mbit/s

$ sudo kopia snapshot create /
Snapshotting root@lingual:/ …

0 hashing, 0 hashed (0 B), 0 cached (0 B), uploaded 201 B, estimating…
Created snapshot with root kbc74d3f46e30993fef85405f7398a458 and ID 601e2c97381e112be12d87376255e217 in 0s