How to make an incremental backup from a LINUX laptop to the cloud?

Question

linux

I want to set up a backup of data from my laptop to the cloud,
so that in case of failure / loss of a laptop, I can restore the system to a new
laptop quickly and painlessly.
The option to back up the entire system every time is not an option, you need either an
incremental backup or snapshots, which I don’t quite understand how they work.
The second point, I would very much like the backup to be made without turning off the system,
but I understand this is unlikely.

Answer 1

dd or git to help. everything is on default

Answer 2

for entogo you need either btrfs or zfs to roll onto the working partition - you will have snapshots and everything else without shutting down.
as well as built-in incremental backups from snapshots.
and other goodies.
if there are no database files in the working partition, then you can script tar backups with increments via --newer.

Answer 3

A backup of the entire system will not give anything good and will rather add hemorrhoids for recovery. the hardware may be different, the uid of the screws may be different, etc.
Also, incremental backups are not very good, and if they are done, then in a short time. In general, a spherical horse in a vacuum will be something like this:
1) Full backup once a month. Store no more than, for example, 2 pieces, i.e. for the last and the previous month.
2) Full backup once a week. Store no more than, for example, 5 pieces, i.e. over the last 5 weeks.
3) Incremental backup every day, keep a week and then delete and start a new week.
Eggs must be stored in separate baskets. For example, backup for the whole month on dropbox or any other service. Weekly for example on Yandex. And daily can be directly on your computer on a physically different disk, or even on it.
What technologies to use:
- cloud storage with native connection support (webdav, sftp, ftp...) for convenience and storage of weekly and monthly backups.
- a physical screw for storing daily incremental backups, or directly on the screw itself, which is backed up.
What to back up (according to the importance of the data, the number is more important):
0 - photos, pictures, videos, music.
1 - system and software configs
2 - documents, projects, working files.
* backups do not need games, the system itself, logs, temporary files, most likely music and video.
Soft:
- tar to create monthly and weekly backups
- cp\mv to move\copy the resulting backup archive to the cloud
- rsync for incremental backups or completely feng shui zfs\btrfs
- cron to run backups
Optional software:
- notification that the backup is successful somewhere on the eyes (telegram, mail, notification on the screen)
- logs so that if something understands why the backup failed
- EncFS on cloud drives so that no one even stealing the box or the owner himself (Yandex \ dropbox ...) could fish out files from backups
Option 2: you can buy a large amount of Yandex disk \ dropbox \ mailru disk, mount it and mount EncFS on top of the home folder directory. It will turn out such an unkillable directory with everything, and with a bonus, you can mount it from another laptop, getting the same working environment (relatively).