From: Russell Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 05:09:06 GMT Subject: Re: git as a backup tool? Message-ID: In-Reply-To: On 5/14/07, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote: > Hi, > > Has anyone considered using git as a backup tool? I.e. > - put your whole file system in git > - do `git add .; git commit -a' from cron > - copy .git to external media once in a while > - clean up old stuff (unused and older than xx days) from .git I'm using git to backup my private email, all in Maildir format, in that manner. In addition, I push to a remote bare repository automatically, using ssh host keys. The most annoying issue was trying to prevent spam getting stuck in the mail history. I do this by having the "unsure" mail folder in a different place, and then having a symlink from the mail store point there so mutt can still find it easily if needed. Backing up a whole home directory would require careful thought about what _not_ to backup, similar to the spam issue. You probably wouldn't want to backup things that you download off the net and can easily retrieve again, like foo-1.2.tar.gz etc. I'm not sure what you mean by cleaning up old stuff. git (or at least my usage of it) requires the whole history to be in the repository. I haven't looked at shallow clones or other ways to prune history. -- Virus found in this message.