Managing Systems and Workgroups: A Guide for HP-UX System Administrators

Administering a System: Managing Disks and Files
Backing Up Data
Chapter 6682
Graph files contain one entry per line. Entries that
begin with the character i indicate included files; those
that begin with the character e indicate excluded files.
For example:
i /home
e /home/deptD
The above file will cause all of the directory /home with
the exception of /home/deptD to be backed up.
You can identify a graph file with the -g option of the
fbackup command.
Determining How Often to Back Up Data
Evaluate the applications running on your system and the needs of your
users to determine how critical the data on your system is to them.
Consider the following:
• How often do the contents of files change?
• How critical is it that files’ contents be up-to-date?
Full Backups vs. Incremental Backups
Once you have identified a list of files to include and exclude, decide
whether you want all of the files represented by your list to be backed up
(a full backup) or only those files that have changed or that have been
created since the last time you backed up this set of files (an
incremental backup).
NOTE A full backup does not mean a backup of every file on your system. It
means a backup of every file on your include list, regardless of when it
was last backed up.
To ensure consistency, do not modify or use different graph files between
full and incremental backups