Re: backups

[Joachim Trinkwitz <jtr@uni-bonn.de>]

Ken Weingold <hazmat@hellrot.org> writes:

> I am going to be setting up Linux server at work for something and
> want to do backups, weekly I guess.  Any suggestions on software to do
> this?  I am not familiar with unix backups.

Maybe not as sophisticated as the other suggested solutions, but I was
always most satisfied with simply using 'mirrordir' and a removable
device (a MO in my case). You can write a simple batch script to
backup the important directories, i.e. /home, /etc and maybe some
other, defining excludes (e.g. $HOME/.netscape/cache) via mirrordir's
commandline options. The benefit with this simple solution is easy
access to the data via cp; the drawback is that you have to install
Debian from scratch when the harddrive gets broken (you need a working
system to restore your data) -- but this can be an advantage, too.

O course, you should use a rotating set of disks, not simply trust on
a single one.

Greetings,
joachim