Donald D Henson wrote:
On Tue, 2006-03-21 at 16:15 +0100, Daniel Bauer wrote:
Hi everybody
I'd like to know how you manage your backing-up: - what do you back-up - and how? (on what media, using what programs, how do you keep track?)
As I am relatively new to Linux up to now I just backup the data-files I am actually working with, saving them to another HD or to CD's by copying (most of them are compressed photo files, so gz etc. doesn't make much sense in that case).
But I have absolutely no backup of settings, system parts or what ever might be necessary when e.g. my system-disc crashes. I don't even have an idea _what_ would be of use to back-up, how and what to keep up-to-date, and: how to re-use it in the bad case...
Maybe this is interesting not only to me, but If you consider it just another silly newbie question already asked more than you can stand, I am sorry, but then would very much appreciate to be directed to suitable links anyway...
Daniel
-- Daniel Bauer photographer Basel Switzerland professional photography: http://www.daniel-bauer.com special interest site: http://www.bauer-nudes.com
I back up /home, /pub, and /srv, on the theory that I will have to reinstall everything else. I use rdiff-backup nightly. rdiff-backup alllows for backup of virtually any combination of files and directories, will backup over a network (using ssh for security), and allows for restoral of any set of files at any given time in the past.
/etc was named already. Furthermore: for i in sadm spool yp \ lib/named lib/mailman lib/mysql lib/pgsql lib/samba do # backup /var/$i (There might be more /var directories of interest for you. These are just the services that I am using.) If you have a database that is not too large (i.e., only a few GBs), think about dumping it nightly. That's much safer than just copying the database files. If you have several systems, consider collecting status messages of the backup jobs at one place (e.g., using NFS) and have another job that checks that status messages daily. If you use Nagios, integrate that other job as a plugin into Nagios. (That's what I'm doing.) If you got a business, or if you've got important private data on your system, make a disaster recovery plan. Part of that plan is to get crucial data out of your home or your company. Safe remote data backup on the cheap is possible: Get a cheap Linux (virtual) server from some hoster, mine costs EUR 10 per month. Export a file system via NFS to you. (Pay attention to proper firewall rules.) Mount a file from that file system via loopback and crypto fs on your local system. rsync to that file system. The whole encryption will happen on your local system, your data will be confidential at the hosting system. Note: If your business is big enough, this is not a good idea. Buy a DR service. Cheers, Joachim -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Joachim Schrod Email: jschrod@acm.org Roedermark, Germany