Hi,

Philip Prindeville wrote on 2015-03-10 16:49:30 -0600 [[BackupPC-users] Config 
example for backing up linux host, local disk drive]:
> [...]
> I have a Linux desktop box with a WD USB 3.0 external drive which I want to
> use for backups.

this is all you give us, and you expect meaningful answers in form of
configuration examples?

> [...]
> I have the drive locally attached and mounted as /mnt/mybook and the
> filesystem has the top-level directory ?backups? in it.

A short selection of questions this raises:

- Is the drive attached permanently (pre-boot to post-shutdown) or only
  occasionally for backup or other purposes? The mere fact that you *mention*
  that it is external already suggests the connection is not permanent.
- Do you plan to store other data alongside the backups in the same partition?
  Don't.
- What filesystem type?
- What is the purpose of your backups? Saving user data, creating a history of
  user data changes, system bare metal restore, ...?
- Are you at all considering automatically scheduled backups, or would a
  backup always be initiated manually?

The short answer to the question at hand is that BackupPC is probably not the
right tool, though it can doubtlessly be made to do what you want, presuming
you can specify what you want it to do. The fact that you write

> Should be trivial, right?

as well as the very idea of doing localhost only backups to an external drive
suggests you might not have read more about BackupPC than its name. Your use
case seems to be *very different* from what BackupPC aims at: automated
scheduling of backups in a multi-client environment (with "client" referring
to a target to backup, which makes as much sense for traditional server hosts
as for, say, notebooks or Windoze computers with decentralized user data). You
*can* use it with single hosts, but with a removable pool medium you're asking
for a lot of hassle to undo the advantages BackupPC is supposed to give you.

Are you looking for something like Apple's Time Machine?

Regards,
Holger

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