What is safe to exclude for a full system backup?

Posted by seb on Ask Ubuntu See other posts from Ask Ubuntu or by seb
Published on 2011-02-28T20:45:23Z Indexed on 2011/02/28 23:33 UTC
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backup

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cache

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thumbnails

Hi, I'm looking for a list which paths/files are safe to exclude for a full system/home backup.

Considering that I have a list of installed packages.

/home/*/.thumbnails
/home/*/.cache
/home/*/.mozilla/firefox/*.default/Cache
/home/*/.mozilla/firefox/*.default/OfflineCache
/home/*/.local/share/Trash
/home/*/.gvfs/
/tmp/
/var/tmp/
not real folders but can cause severe problems when 'restoring'
- /dev
- /proc
- /sys

What about...

/var/ in general?
/var/backups/ - can get quite large
/var/log/ - does not require much space and can help for later comparison
/lost+found/

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