Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (2806 mails)

[Bob Williams <linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Monday 28 July 2008 13:38:12 Carlos E. R. wrote:
> The Monday 2008-07-28 at 14:09 +0200, J Beris wrote:
> > I have a question about Rsync. Like several people here, I use an
> > external USB disk to make daily backups of my critical data. For
> > this, I have written a shell script which mounts the disk as
> > necessary and then calls rsync to do the actual backup.
> >
> > This works very well, except that if I delete a file in my home
> > directory, have rsync do its thing at night, then the next morning
> > that deleted file is gone from my backup too, so I can only go back
> > one day. This is nice for a disk crash, but not for restoring data
> > that was deleted 4 days ago, for instance. Can someone tell me if it
> > is possible to have rsync retain the data in the backup for say
> > another 14 or 30 days before purging them? I have looked at the man
> > page, but haven't found an answer to my question there. Does someone
> > have an idea, please?
>
> rsync $OPTIONS --link-dest=$YESTERDAY  $WHAT $TODAY
>
> But it would probably be easier to use any of the several existing
> scripts that handle that situation nicely.
>
>          rdiff-backup the previous backups are stored as rdifs.
>                          I think it will go very slow over USB.
>
>          rsnapshot    rsync style.
>          http://www.dirvish.org/
>          pdumpfs (http://0xcc.net/pdumpfs)
>
> --
> Cheers,
>         Carlos E. R.

This is the script I have used for several years. It works well, and is 
based on Mike Rubel's script. I believe things like rsnapshot are gui 
frontends for something similar. The incremental functionality comes from 
cp being able to make hardlinks to files, so even though rsync has 
deleted a file in today's backup, the file still exists because there is 
a hardlink in yesterday's copy. The file is lost only when the hardlink 
falls off the end (in my case, after 28 days). The script runs as a 
nightly cronjob by root. 'lacie' is the name of my external USB backup 
drive.

----------------
#!/bin/bash

# step 1: delete the oldest snapshot, if it exists

if [ -d /media/lacie/daily.28 ] ; then rm -rf /media/lacie/daily.28 ; fi ;

# step 2: shift the middle snapshot(s) back by one, if they exist

if [ -d /media/lacie/daily.27 ] ; then 
mv /media/lacie/daily.27 /media/lacie/daily.28 ; fi ;
if [ -d /media/lacie/daily.26 ] ; then 
mv /media/lacie/daily.26 /media/lacie/daily.27 ; fi ;
if [ -d /media/lacie/daily.25 ] ; then 
mv /media/lacie/daily.25 /media/lacie/daily.26 ; fi ;
if [ -d /media/lacie/daily.24 ] ; then 
mv /media/lacie/daily.24 /media/lacie/daily.25 ; fi ;
if [ -d /media/lacie/daily.23 ] ; then 
mv /media/lacie/daily.23 /media/lacie/daily.24 ; fi ;
if [ -d /media/lacie/daily.22 ] ; then 
mv /media/lacie/daily.22 /media/lacie/daily.23 ; fi ;
if [ -d /media/lacie/daily.21 ] ; then 
mv /media/lacie/daily.21 /media/lacie/daily.22 ; fi ;
if [ -d /media/lacie/daily.20 ] ; then 
mv /media/lacie/daily.20 /media/lacie/daily.21 ; fi ;
if [ -d /media/lacie/daily.19 ] ; then 
mv /media/lacie/daily.19 /media/lacie/daily.20 ; fi ;
if [ -d /media/lacie/daily.18 ] ; then 
mv /media/lacie/daily.18 /media/lacie/daily.19 ; fi ;
if [ -d /media/lacie/daily.17 ] ; then 
mv /media/lacie/daily.17 /media/lacie/daily.18 ; fi ;
if [ -d /media/lacie/daily.16 ] ; then 
mv /media/lacie/daily.16 /media/lacie/daily.17 ; fi ;
if [ -d /media/lacie/daily.15 ] ; then 
mv /media/lacie/daily.15 /media/lacie/daily.16 ; fi ;
if [ -d /media/lacie/daily.14 ] ; then 
mv /media/lacie/daily.14 /media/lacie/daily.15 ; fi ;
if [ -d /media/lacie/daily.13 ] ; then 
mv /media/lacie/daily.13 /media/lacie/daily.14 ; fi ;
if [ -d /media/lacie/daily.12 ] ; then 
mv /media/lacie/daily.12 /media/lacie/daily.13 ; fi ;
if [ -d /media/lacie/daily.11 ] ; then 
mv /media/lacie/daily.11 /media/lacie/daily.12 ; fi ;
if [ -d /media/lacie/daily.10 ] ; then 
mv /media/lacie/daily.10 /media/lacie/daily.11 ; fi ;
if [ -d /media/lacie/daily.09 ] ; then 
mv /media/lacie/daily.09 /media/lacie/daily.10 ; fi ;
if [ -d /media/lacie/daily.08 ] ; then 
mv /media/lacie/daily.08 /media/lacie/daily.09 ; fi ;
if [ -d /media/lacie/daily.07 ] ; then 
mv /media/lacie/daily.07 /media/lacie/daily.08 ; fi ;
if [ -d /media/lacie/daily.06 ] ; then 
mv /media/lacie/daily.06 /media/lacie/daily.07 ; fi ;
if [ -d /media/lacie/daily.05 ] ; then 
mv /media/lacie/daily.05 /media/lacie/daily.06 ; fi ;
if [ -d /media/lacie/daily.04 ] ; then 
mv /media/lacie/daily.04 /media/lacie/daily.05 ; fi ;
if [ -d /media/lacie/daily.03 ] ; then 
mv /media/lacie/daily.03 /media/lacie/daily.04 ; fi ;
if [ -d /media/lacie/daily.02 ] ; then 
mv /media/lacie/daily.02 /media/lacie/daily.03 ; fi ;
if [ -d /media/lacie/daily.01 ] ; then 
mv /media/lacie/daily.01 /media/lacie/daily.02 ; fi ;

# step 3: make a hard-link-only (except for dirs) copy of the latest 
snapshot.
# if that exists

if [ -d /media/lacie/daily.00 ] ; then 
cp -al /media/lacie/daily.00 /media/lacie/daily.01 ; fi ;

# step 4: rsync from the system into the latest snapshot
# - this is the bit that does the actual backup!

/usr/bin/rsync -av --no-l --delete --delete-excluded 
--exclude-from=/home/bob/bin/excludedfiles /etc /home/bob /home/hils /home/leon 
/home/play /home/Shared_Documents /media/lacie/daily.00

----------------

-- 
Bob
Registered Linux User #463880           FSFE Member #1300
GPG-FP: A6C1 457C 6DBA B13E 5524 F703 D12A FB79 926B 994E
openSUSE 11.0, Kernel 2.6.25.11-0.1-default, KDE 3.5.9
Intel Celeron 2.53GB, 2GB DDR RAM, nVidia GeForce 7600GS
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