/etc is a weird amalgamation of system- and human-created and edited files. When reinstalling a system, for instance, one should not copy all files from a backup into /etc, as drive UUIDs, etc. might have changed. It also isn’t possible to, say, back up files that have changed since the system ins…

If Bluefin supports etckeeper , that is one way to do it. Alasi, I couldn’t figure out if etckeeper is supported.

Thanks! It isn’t built in, nor is it in brew. I’ve downloaded the source and will give it a look.

Can’t you just use the native snapshot feature of the btrfs filesystem? For example my Documents, Pictures folders are in a btrfs subvolume that I created /mnt/userdata . Then symlinked back to $HOME. I moved my Desktop folder into Documents. This way for my personal files I can simply backup use…

[image] JohnAtl: When reinstalling a system, for instance, one should not copy all files from a backup into /etc, as drive UUIDs, etc. might have changed. Thanks. Yeah, I think the above, from my original post, is where a lot of the difficulty comes in. I have a script that snapshots root, h…

Default /etc shipped by the image is under /usr/etc, hence I’m using a combination of ostree admin config-diff and diff -yrW200 --suppress-common-lines /usr/etc /etc to get the list of changed files under /etc.

Thanks. I’ll look into those.

Thanks to @mxj4 for getting to the important commands. I wrote an article about this here … [image] Did You Know? How ostree update merges changes into etc and var Bluefin Did You Know? How ostree (rpm-ostree) update merges changes into etc and var Or Why sys…

Thanks. I look forward to reading it.

Sorry for coming late to the discussion. Regarding “etckeeper”, is it possible to layer it without the dnf dependency, e.g. “rpm-ostree install etckeeper --excludepkgs=dnf”? It might solve the problem of dnf messing with the rpm-ostree upgrades. Just a thought, I don’t know if it works. Or just to…

[image] tom71: Sorry for coming late to the discussion. Regarding “etckeeper”, is it possible to layer it without the dnf dependency, e.g. “rpm-ostree install etckeeper --excludepkgs=dnf”? It might solve the problem of dnf messing with the rpm-ostree upgrades. Just a thought, I don’t know if it…

How do you back up and restore /etc?

General

klmcw April 17, 2025, 2:52am 8

Thanks to @mxj4 for getting to the important commands.

I wrote an article about this here …

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A way to reset `/etc` Contributing	0	260	November 16, 2023
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Did You Know? How ostree update merges changes into etc and var Bluefin	1	986	June 4, 2025
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How do you back up and restore /etc?

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