Tom Nielsen wrote:
I was just about to setup a raid 1 when I realized I didn't want to really accomplish that. What I want is something to backup my system incase I fubar something. So, rather than dd my drive every night, I'm wondering how I can backup my system where only the changed files get backed up rather than the whole drive. I looked at rsync but I'm not sure if that's what I want.
Tom, Rsync will do what you want. I prefer to use mirrordir with NFS (because historically I've had to keep differing filesystems in sync - including windoze) and mirrordir did the job (not to mention blisteringly fast). After installing mirrordir (rpm is at http://mirrordir.sourceforge.net) the following script, run from cron (as root), mirrors the primary share to backup share: # Script to mirror the /share area on primary to backup drive # Run this on backup machine NOW=`date +%H%I%d%m%Y` echo "mirroring started at $NOW ..." > /tmp/mirr_report mount primary_IP_address:/share /mnt sleep 3 MOUNTED=`df | grep share`
/tmp/mirr_report if test -n "$MOUNTED" ; then /usr/bin/mirrordir -v /mnt /share >> /tmp/mirr_report fi umount /mnt
Also make sure that on the primary machine the share is exported with full access for the backup machine. Like an entry in etc/exports on the primary machine: /share backup_machine(rw,no_root_squash) For this reason only use this on a protected network (your home network behind a firewall should be OK). Damian