Craig Sanders schrieb:
and i'd certainly use ssh rather than ftp. even on a local network, ftp is exposing the operator account's password in cleartext.
yes, i'm aware of that. this is a local network but sftp/ssh is not supported on the backup server. i could gpg-encrypt the backups (on the fly?)....
overall, though, i'd only use a scheme like this for backing up small quantities of data - configuration files and so on. for large data sets like /home, i'd buy a decent tape drive (preferably an autoloader with at least 7 cartridges, one for each day. they're expensive new, but can be quite cheap second hand. buy the best you can afford - there's not much point in backing up important data to unreliable equipment) and set up amanda.
no, this is a somewhat big (and cheap) hosting provider, no extra devices could be attached. and i really want to go with always-on-bord-utilities as much as possible - ncftp is exotic enough ;)
BTW, another useful backup technique for small data sets like config files is to use a revision control system like RCS or subversion. if
yes, i've thought about sth. like this for /etc, perhaps with different branches (?) for each machine. but this is not in the works for now.
thanks, Christian. -- BOFH excuse #173: Recursive traversal of loopback mount points