Re: Preferred Backup Method?

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On Tue, Dec 04, 2007 at 08:29:03PM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote:
On 12/04/07 16:19, Michael Pobega wrote:
On Tue, Dec 04, 2007 at 04:04:47PM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote:
On 12/04/07 15:09, Michael Pobega wrote:
What is d-u's preferred method of backups? Now that I'm running servers
on my system (Apache, MySQL, SSH, etc.) I need to find a good method of
backing up, because no matter how much security someone has things may
still go wrong.

So list your preferred methods of creating/restoring backups and the
pros and cons. Thanks!
*Much* more information needed.


Sorry, I wasn't thinking.

How much stuff? 50MB? 5GB? 500GB? 5TB?


80GB HDD. It isn't full, of course, but that's the maximum (Currently
about 45 GB)

How compressible is it? Text/MySQL files or MP3s and JPGs?


I wouldn't know the answer to that questions.

MySQL dumps are compressible (unless it's compressed during the dump
phase). Text is compressible. OOo, AbiWord, Gnumeric, etc aren't.

How important is it? Your own stuff, or a business' stuff?


It's pretty important; It's my own stuff, it has all of my school work,
programming work, pictures, videos, and configuration files on it.

Pictures and video obviously aren't compressible.

How big of a window do you have to back it up? 30 minutes at 23:15,
and you're fired if it goes past midnight? All night between 17:30
and 07:30?


A weekly night-backup would be my preferred method.

Perfectly adequate for home use.

How often will the lusers will "Michael, this stupid computer ate my
work. Bring it back!!" (Meaning, of course, that they
stupidly/carelessly deleted/overwrote it.) If it's a database, will
the developers want regular copies restored for testing?


It's just my own stuff...The odds are probably low of someone deleting
my work by accident, but better safe than sorry.

Tar (or rsync) your source trees on an hourly basis to a totally
separate directory. Volatile stuff needs to be saved frequently.

Frequency? Nightly, weekly, every-other-day?


Weekly.

Retention? Keep backups for a month? Quarter? Year? 7 years?


I'd probably keep backups for two weeks, so I've have two backups at any
given time.

Budget? Always a killer...


I have another laptop sitting around with a 60GB HDD; Could I use that
as a backup?

Otherwise all I have is a 4GB pendrive and no money (But I could get my
hands on an 80GB External HDD easily)

3 weeks till Santa-bot tries to trim the tree with your entrails and
deck the halls with your guts. I'm sure he could hurl an empty
external case or two at you.

As for backing it up, tar. Works like a champ.


Just `tar -cvvf backup-`date`.tar /`? Is it really that simple?

Plain old "date"? No. I prefer `date +%y%m%d.%H%M`.


I'm trying to write a shell script to use tar for backups, but I want to
know; Which directories are nessecary to backup with tar and which
aren't? Obviously /bin, /usr, /home, /boot, /lib, /srv (Where I keep
all of my chroots) and /etc are, but are any of the other directories
mandatory to backup? Or are any of these directories fruitless to
backup?

- --
If programmers deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative
programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished if they
restrict the use of these programs.
- Richard Stallman
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