William Hammond wrote:
At 02:25 PM 5/4/2008, you wrote:
William Hammond wrote:
I have a number of small OpenSuSE 10.3 Samba File Servers. They have commercial software that does a good job of backing up. but, like most, not such a good job of restoring.
Especially if you need to do a bare metal recovery.
That's not proper backup software -- that's archiving software being (mis-)used as backup software.
For example: HP Legato is an archiver. HP OmniBack is a backup solution.
You are correct, most of my guy's use NovaNET, which has the option of a Disaster Recovery Module - which doesn't work...!
They also are the source for one of HP backup solutions, but it wasn't called OmniBack, it was something else...
On some of these systems I keep an identical drive already set up so that if needed I can plug it in and do a data only restore. I don't use or believe that strongly in mirroring or duplexing so I don't want to go there. Question is: What are the easiest/best solutions for Disaster Recovery...?
Any software from which a "baremetal" recovery involves only these three steps: 1: reinstall OS in vanilla configuration 2: install recovery software 3: run recovery software using NOTHING more than the backup media (i.e. no having to provide magic numbers from on-system records files or typing in by hand like HP Legato requires, etc.)
One that a "Shop Owner" could perform with a little help.
Dump is still very reliable. And you don't even have to do step #2 above.
However, instead of specifying dump device -f /dev/mt, I would specify the dump device to be a USB disk, -f /dev/sdwhatever, or even autmounting the USB disk, and using -f /backupdisk/$DATE.$FS where $DATE=`date +%F` and $FS=`echo $FILESYSTEM | tr / _` for example: root filesystem would be dumped into: 2008-05-04._ /home filesystem would be dumped into: 2008-05-04._home /usr/local would be dumped into: 2008-05-04._usr_local
I could do either of these, This sounds like the right approach, but I'm going to have to do a littler reading and playing around to understand it fully.
I've been trying to avoid having to learn shell scripting, but your going to force me to update the skills bank.... ;-)
Shell scripting is easy. Whatever you would type at the command line...you put into the shell script. And then add convenience by using variables. VARIABLE=some_expression_here command -flag $VARIABLE The $ symbol means "evaluate the following string as a variable So you can do things like this: #!/bin/ksh # WARNING: Untested...I just composed this as I was reply to your email # # CAVEATS -- this uses ONLY the ext2/ext3 dump command, so it only # works with ext3/ext3 filesystems. More logic is needed to dump # things like reiserfs or xfs filesystems, too. # # Also, list of filesystems to dump should not be hardcoded in # the script... SHOULD be: # for MOUTPOINT in `cat /etc/dump_filesystems` # # where /etc/dump_filesystems is a file containing a list # of the mountpoints of the filesystems you want dumped. # # BACKUPDIR=/backups DATE=`date +%F` # make a string in yyyy-mm-dd form HOST=`hostname -s` # what host is executing this? MTAB=/etc/mtab # list of mounted filesystems DAY=`date %a` # What day of the week is it? if [[ 'fri' == '$DAY' ]] then LEVEL = 0 # Full backup on Friday else LEVEL = 9 # Partial backup the rest of the week. fi if ![[ grep $BACKUPDIR $MTAB]] # Backup device mounted? then mount $BACKUPDIR # backup disk *MUST* be in /etc/fstab fi for MOUNTPOINT in / /home /opt /usr /local do MTPT=`echo $MOUNTPOINT | tr / _` BACKUPFILE=${HOST}.${DATE}.${MTPT} # or BACKUPFILE=${DATE}.${HOST}.${MTPT} dump -$LEVEL -f $BACKUPFILE $MOUNTPOINT done echo "Backups complete." echo "Please wait for Back up disk to be unmounted" umount $BACKUPDIR echo "Back up disk now unmounted." echo "Back up disk man now be safely removed" echo "Please hit any key and return to finish program." read $A
Great advise, thanks.....
Why the preference for a Flash Drive (I use them all the time, but not like this)..?
No, not a flash drive... a regular drive in a USB disk. Depending on how much data is on these machines, you might be able to use a 2.5" drive in a $25 USB carrier. The reason I am shying away from your backup tapes is that except for hugely expensive tape drives (with ridiculously expensive tapes in the $50-$500 range), you won't be able to do the entire backup to one tape...which means changing tapes in the middle of your backups...which a non-IT person is not likely to stay around for...not even most business owners.
These Servers don't have any "IT" people on staff, but I'd like them to be as independant as possible in a crisis. I'm open to both built in tools (dump/restore rsync, etc.), although I'm not that familiar with them, and commercial..
Dump commands can be put into a script (shell script or tcl/tk, which is runnable by creating an icon on the desktop with "create link to app" on the desktop,
All these systems have DVD Writers and the Backup is to DDS-4 DAT Drives
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