Well, this is going to be a brain-dead question to most of you, but I hope I can get some good direction for the answer... Way Back when I was a college sys admin (as a student), we used dump for incremental backups and "restore -i" for recovery. Then for a long time I didn't have to worry about tape backups. Do simple stuff with home and work machines, Zip disks, etc. Now I'm going tape backups again for two companies. I have been using dump and restore (worked before, what the heck...) and they have been working fine. Then I found out that dump is filesystem specific (ext2/3 for the versions I'm using as of late) and that they are not reliable. That they can work fine a thousand times but there are deficiencies that will cause them to fail. Eventually it will bite me. So, I am looking again for a backup plan. I want one generic, as the two places I'm worried about are rather small and I don't know that we're ready to be locked into a fancy solution -- yet. cpio and tar seem popular and either will probably work okay. What I am looking for is some type of document/advice which gives a brief outline of unix-tool backup strategies like whether find/cpio are more amenable to incremental backup than tar and if tar is more amenable to viewing the contents of the tape should the index file be lost, etc. I am quite at home with unix command line tools and script-writing. But I would like to try to take advantage of the exiting knowledge of the modern linux community to save me some time in research. BTW, we already have a RAID on the one system and the other is less-critical and doesn't need a RAID. We also already have the tapes and drives. So HDD vs. tape vs. CD/DVD backups is not the issue. I'm just looking at the options for the mechanics of doing the tape backup. Thank you so much! -- -M There are 10 kinds of people in this world: Those who can count in binary and those who cannot.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Monday 10 May 2004 09:57, Michael George wrote:
Well, this is going to be a brain-dead question to most of you, but I hope I can get some good direction for the answer...
I am quite at home with unix command line tools and script-writing. But I would like to try to take advantage of the exiting knowledge of the modern linux community to save me some time in research.
BTW, we already have a RAID on the one system and the other is less-critical and doesn't need a RAID. We also already have the tapes and drives. So HDD vs. tape vs. CD/DVD backups is not the issue. I'm just looking at the options for the mechanics of doing the tape backup.
A recent presentation at my LUG recommended bacula, there is a SuSE package available it can use mysql or postgres. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (GNU/Linux) iD4DBQFAn65PLPrIaE/xBZARAtIoAJi3mhZhc7pz78wTiBOTDVGgNRBZAKDINZxg P4xA90mqZ2egCbSPJLb8oQ== =7kuu -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On Mon, May 10, 2004 at 12:31:11PM -0400, Mike Kenzie wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
On Monday 10 May 2004 09:57, Michael George wrote:
Well, this is going to be a brain-dead question to most of you, but I hope I can get some good direction for the answer...
I am quite at home with unix command line tools and script-writing. But I would like to try to take advantage of the exiting knowledge of the modern linux community to save me some time in research.
BTW, we already have a RAID on the one system and the other is less-critical and doesn't need a RAID. We also already have the tapes and drives. So HDD vs. tape vs. CD/DVD backups is not the issue. I'm just looking at the options for the mechanics of doing the tape backup.
A recent presentation at my LUG recommended bacula, there is a SuSE package available it can use mysql or postgres.
Interesting. I will look into bacula. Thanks! -- -M There are 10 kinds of people in this world: Those who can count in binary and those who cannot.
On Monday 10 May 2004 13:57, Michael George wrote:
Then for a long time I didn't have to worry about tape backups. Do simple stuff with home and work machines, Zip disks, etc.
~ just my mileage . . . ~ use cron, to back up every hour, to a separate partition. ~ my system is about 5,2 gig ~ <rync> backup usually takes about 5 minutes. script is like this :- _______________ #!/bin/sh # # use rsync to backup / to /dev/hda6 # mount -t reiserfs /dev/hda6 /mnt # df cd rsync -avr --delete --delete-after --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/proc --exclude=/tmp / /mnt cd cp /mnt/etc/fstab.6bak /mnt/etc/fstab df umount /mnt cd ____________________ best wishes ____________ sent on Linux ____________
On Mon, May 10, 2004 at 04:34:00PM +0000, pinto wrote:
On Monday 10 May 2004 13:57, Michael George wrote:
Then for a long time I didn't have to worry about tape backups. Do simple stuff with home and work machines, Zip disks, etc.
~ just my mileage . . .
~ use cron, to back up every hour, to a separate partition.
~ my system is about 5,2 gig ~ <rync> backup usually takes about 5 minutes.
Yes, rsync is going to be a part of the plan, but this type of backup does not allow us to go back a day, week, or more. That is why we need the archival qualities of tape. Thanks for your input! -- -M There are 10 kinds of people in this world: Those who can count in binary and those who cannot.
On Monday 10 May 2004 12:51, Michael George wrote:
On Mon, May 10, 2004 at 04:34:00PM +0000, pinto wrote:
On Monday 10 May 2004 13:57, Michael George wrote:
Then for a long time I didn't have to worry about tape backups. Do simple stuff with home and work machines, Zip disks, etc.
____________________________
~ just my mileage . . .
~ use cron, to back up every hour, to a separate partition.
~ my system is about 5,2 gig ~ <rync> backup usually takes about 5 minutes.
Yes, rsync is going to be a part of the plan, but this type of backup does not allow us to go back a day, week, or more. That is why we need the archival qualities of tape.
Thanks for your input!
Actually, the rsync method does let you go back up a day, a week or a few weeks if given enough space. http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/ has a guide to using rsync to make automated snapshot-style backups. "they create the illusion of multiple, full backups per day without the space or processing overhead. All of the snapshots are read-only, and are accessible directly by users as special system directories. It is often possible to store several hours, days, and even weeks' worth of snapshots with slightly more than 2x storage."
On Monday 10 May 2004 20:37, user86 wrote:
On Monday 10 May 2004 12:51, Michael George wrote:
On Mon, May 10, 2004 at 04:34:00PM +0000, pinto wrote:
On Monday 10 May 2004 13:57, Michael George wrote:
Then for a long time I didn't have to worry about tape backups. Do simple stuff with home and work machines, Zip disks, etc.
____________________________
~ just my mileage . . .
~ use cron, to back up every hour, to a separate partition.
~ my system is about 5,2 gig ~ <rync> backup usually takes about 5 minutes.
Yes, rsync is going to be a part of the plan, but this type of backup does not allow us to go back a day, week, or more. That is why we need the archival qualities of tape.
Thanks for your input!
Actually, the rsync method does let you go back up a day, a week or a few weeks if given enough space. http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/ has a guide to using rsync to make automated snapshot-style backups.
"they create the illusion of multiple, full backups per day without the space or processing overhead. All of the snapshots are read-only, and are accessible directly by users as special system directories. It is often possible to store several hours, days, and even weeks' worth of snapshots with slightly more than 2x storage."
Check out this improved rsync snapshot script: http://www.rsnapshot.org
Anyone out there have any experience doing a snapshot to an external usb drive? john On 10-May-04 Kian Spongsveen (spam account) wrote:
On Monday 10 May 2004 20:37, user86 wrote:
On Monday 10 May 2004 12:51, Michael George wrote:
On Mon, May 10, 2004 at 04:34:00PM +0000, pinto wrote:
On Monday 10 May 2004 13:57, Michael George wrote:
Then for a long time I didn't have to worry about tape backups. Do simple stuff with home and work machines, Zip disks, etc.
____________________________
~ just my mileage . . .
~ use cron, to back up every hour, to a separate partition.
~ my system is about 5,2 gig ~ <rync> backup usually takes about 5 minutes.
Yes, rsync is going to be a part of the plan, but this type of backup does not allow us to go back a day, week, or more. That is why we need the archival qualities of tape.
Thanks for your input!
Actually, the rsync method does let you go back up a day, a week or a few weeks if given enough space. http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/ has a guide to using rsync to make automated snapshot-style backups.
"they create the illusion of multiple, full backups per day without the space or processing overhead. All of the snapshots are read-only, and are accessible directly by users as special system directories. It is often possible to store several hours, days, and even weeks' worth of snapshots with slightly more than 2x storage."
Check out this improved rsync snapshot script: http://www.rsnapshot.org
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael George"
On Mon, May 10, 2004 at 04:34:00PM +0000, pinto wrote:
On Monday 10 May 2004 13:57, Michael George wrote:
Then for a long time I didn't have to worry about tape backups. Do simple stuff with home and work machines, Zip disks, etc.
~ just my mileage . . .
~ use cron, to back up every hour, to a separate partition.
~ my system is about 5,2 gig ~ <rync> backup usually takes about 5 minutes.
Yes, rsync is going to be a part of the plan, but this type of backup does not allow us to go back a day, week, or more. That is why we need the archival qualities of tape.
Thanks for your input!
-- -M
There are 10 kinds of people in this world: Those who can count in binary and those who cannot.
-- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com
On Monday 10 May 2004 16:51, Michael George wrote:
That is why we need the archival qualities of tape
~ maybe good for you, is :- RDIFF-BACKUP [ believe from stable of Andrew Tridgell of Samba fame ] ~ rdiff-backup handles incremental backups. -- best wishes ____________ sent on Linux ____________
participants (7)
-
David Rankin -
John N. Alegre -
Kian Spongsveen (spam account) -
Michael George -
Mike Kenzie -
pinto -
user86