I was thinking whether it is a good idea to backup of all directories starting with dot in my home folder, so that all settings can be restored if anything goes wrong. I just had an instance when I had to clear the home folder as Ubuntu was not logging in. As my home folder is huge, I don't want to backup the entire thing.
Is this a good backup option.
Usually, I do backup to external HDD just several .folders simply by copying them in Krusader (I like this manager, because it recalls me old-time Norton Commander :) ). I personally copy the following folders:
Of course, you can copy other folders (like gnome-related directories). But I like to configure it 'from scratch'.
Good luck.
sudo chown -R username ./* will do the trick
sudo chown -R username:username ./* be preferable by making sure the group also gets reassigned?
May 11, 2011 at 1:08
My trick for "just the dot files" is to use a path of .??* that is, dot followed by at least two characters. This avoids implicitly including the parent directory.
sudo cp -pr .??* /home/homebackup/ -v
May 9, 2011 at 5:16
It's not too trivial, becuase if you try to specify hidden files as .*, you automatically include involuntary . and .. - the current and above directory.
tar -cjf configs.tar.bz2 $(find ./ -mindepth 1 -type d -name ".*")
I started the command from a testdir with ./ for find, because the browser-cache, which is quiete big, would take some minutes to be stored on my system.
