Re: Question on backups using rsync
On Tue, Dec 20, 2005 at 12:19:49PM -0800, Andrew Sackville-West wrote:
> 1) a copy of the critical files (accounting, databases, spreadsheets
> etc.) that are needed for day to day operations in the event of
> corruption or accidental deletion and the like. These are just copies,
> in my case, of just a couple of directories. I don't need long term
> storage, just a few days/weeks of copies that I can refer to incase I
> blow something.
Do you automate this?
> 2) a system backup with a snapshot of the entire system. With hours and
> hours of configuration and setup on my boxes, Id like to have
> occaisional "snapshots" of the whole system. Then if I lose a machine
> (hardrive crash, theft, flood whatever) or blow the system up somehow, I
> can recreate the whole thing a-new relatively easily. In this case, the
> actual critical data from above would theoretically already be stored
> and retrievable somewhere (and usable on any system) and therefore,
> these snapshots do not have to be done as frequently. Just whenever a
> major system change happens, or every couple months to include small
> incremental system creep.
>
> so for case 1 I'd love something offsite, like a dead webpage or
> something where I can just automatically load these files and leave'em
> for now. case 2 needs bigger storage probably and maybe something like
> partitionimage with the files split onto cds/dvds and stored somewhere
> safe. The infrequency of this case allows less convenient means of storage.
I didn't write about it on my web page, but to accomplish the "whole system"
backup, I have everything I have modified linked into a separate partition.
For example, /etc/exim4 is a symlink to /home/ha-dirs/etc/exim4. This allows
me to backup my entire system by only saving a dpkg --get-selections list and
the /home/ha-dirs directory tree to my backup. True, it will not be an
instant restore in case of catastrophic failure, but it saves a huge amount of
space. I can backup everything important to me on 3 CDs instead of 10.
The symlinks are automatically created, so on restore I don't have to manually
recreate all that, just do a Debian install, recreate my packages with dpkg
--set-selections, and restore /home/ha-dirs. Since I have a mirror system
with the root tree synchronized every hour, it's not a huge burden.
Also, this scheme allows me to use a network-RAID such as drbd with old
obselete hard drives, since my /home/ha-dirs is much smaller than /. I don't
use drbd anymore because I have so much redundancy, but I started using the
linking scheme above so I could use drbd with some old machines I had lying
around.
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