Warning
Use a sudo-capable account, keep shell history for audit, and back up critical paths before changing boot, SSH, or package state.
What you will achieve
Simple, scriptable backups with rsync — the workhorse every Linux admin should know.
1) Create local backup with metadata
sudo rsync -aHAX --delete /home/ /backup/home/2) Create remote backup over SSH
rsync -aHAX --delete /etc/ admin@backup-host:/srv/backups/host-etc/3) Test restore path
Restore one directory to a temp location and verify ownership and permissions.