Update on backup solutions..

You may remember I posted asking for advice on a total backup solution. I wanted to use DVDS but I discovered that DVDS dont do proper file names, so I couldn;t do a true backup, and when I tarred up the stuff into 4 gig chunks, they wouldn't do more than 2 gig files..

t this point I got irritated, and looked at the price of a second disk to use as a backup 'mirror'. Cheaper than 5 packs of DVDS or 6 months of DVD backup.

Sod it, I muttered, and wandered into my friendly hardware man, and got a end of line disk at very good money, and set up a script to Rdiff-backup (thanks for pointing me that that) the whole disk onto half of the new one. (depending how this works, may use this machine to back up a customers remote machine - or some parts of it - onto this machine).

Now this should allow me to survive a primary or secondary disk crash pretty well I think, or the loss of either of my two desktops that use it as a data server..I keep no data of any interest on the desktops.

It should be good enough to rebuild a totally new machine as well if the motherboard dies on this one.

Obviously its not fireproof, but a data loss in a fire would be the least of my problems.

Its not thief proof either, but the hous is generally occupied 24x7..

I have some reservations about this however.

First of all, it backs up Mysql: Now I have routinely copied the database files from one machine to another, and that generally works well enough - the data is very slow moving. but are there any gotchas in this?

So here is my disk setup

#df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1 250M 170M 68M 72% /
tmpfs 253M 0 253M 0% /lib/init/rw
udev 10M 68K 10M 1% /dev
tmpfs 253M 4.0K 253M 1% /dev/shm
/dev/hda9 64G 28G 33G 47% /home
/dev/hda8 361M 8.1M 334M 3% /tmp
/dev/hda5 4.6G 730M 3.7G 17% /usr
/dev/hda6 2.8G 1.1G 1.6G 42% /var
/dev/hdb1 74G 31G 40G 44% /backup
/dev/hdb2 74G 180M 70G 1% /backup2

And here is the script used..note this is hacked from another script, and that's why there is redundant stuff in it. Please ignore the obviously irrelevant.


# more /usr/local/scripts/backup-all

#!/bin/sh
DATE=$(date +%Y-%m-%d)
#NOTE: These two paths must end in a / in
#order to correctly build up the other paths
BACKUP_DIR="/backup/"
#These directories shouldn't end in a / although
#I don't think it will cause any problems if
#they do. There should be a space at the end though
#to ensure the database file gets concatenated correctly.
EXCLUDE_DIRS="--exclude /dev --exclude /sys --exclude /proc --exclude /lib/init/rw --exclude /tmp --exclude /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs --exclude /var/run --exclude /var/spool/postfix/public --exclude /var/spool/postfix/private --exclude /backup --exclude /backup2"

/usr/bin/rdiff-backup $EXCLUDE_DIRS / $BACKUP_DIR

Can anyone see any issue I may or may not have missed?

As I say, the purpose of this backup is not to be totally foolproof, but to enable me to rebuild a machine from a disk or motherboard crash and get nearly all the systems back in under a couple of days. And it would seem that I have a way to recover accidentally erased files pretty easily too..

Now..how to back up the wifes OS-X G4 mac..more rdiff twiddles methinks..






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Relevant Pages

  • Re: Server Advice Wanted.
    ... per disk on a mildle used disk on the other a hard drive ... > write out to DVDs. ... > expensive to mirror and backup. ... If a 3TB mirrored system fails, ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • Re: best format for large file split accross several DVDs?
    ... Life's too short to split and burn to DVDs. ... and convenient multiple generation multiple location backup. ... The disk about 500ml. ... Well unless I create my own movie clips they aren;t worth backing up. ...
    (uk.comp.sys.mac)
  • Re: Server Advice Wanted.
    ... > per disk on a mildle used disk on the other a hard drive ... DVDs say 50-100 years. ... fail more often than DVDs since a) the DVD is read-only, ... better system than a tape backup. ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • Re: Transferring data to another computer
    ... Take the disc to the other machine and start backup again, ... use Restore to put the files back on the disk. ... you shouldn't need a technician but you might ... DVDs, do you have Roxio or some such for burning them, or do you need to use ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics)
  • Mit isql mehrere DBs sichern und wiederherstellen
    ... Script habe ich soweit geschrieben aber nach dem ersten Backup steigt ... Hier mal mein Script: ...
    (microsoft.public.de.sqlserver)