Backup techniques
Hi folks,
I'd like to know which programs and strategies you (would) use to backup
*one* debian box. In one case I have available a CD-Burner as backup
device and in the other case a 640MB MO drive.
Constraint: I don't want a complete backup of all partitions but in case
of bad luck to install a new debian system and then restore the files
from the backup. Where (in the file system hierarchy) should i draw the
line between files restored from a backup and those to be restored by a
new installation. (I know that I need a special backup for my postgres
databases.)
I read the manual of afio but it didn't convince me, so I'm considering
using tar and gzip. To create the whole backup archive first and then
split it into pieces (volumes) might take too much space, but I have a
special partition (~800MB) available. To employ split seems not
appropriate ("Hey, wait! I want to change the medium.") The package
description of afio implies that compressed tar archives might not be
save. Is it safer to compress first and archive then? (This would
decrease the compression rate due to Ziv Lempel, and extracting would be
more complicated.) Of course it would be nice to be able to restore only
a certain file.
If somebody has experience with kbackup and kbackup-multibuf
(espescially with CD-Burners) I would appreciate to hear it.
Is it clever to constrain access to the machine during the backup
process? BTW: Why is there a standard user called "backup" who can't
read all files?
I'm especially interested in how a complete restore procedure would look
like (say the hard disc was broken and I bought a new one).
Pointers to any kind of HOWTO doc are also welcome.
Stony
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