Re: Suggestions for multilevel backup of single machine?
On 12/23/-28158 12:59 PM, James Youngman wrote:
Here's my current backup arrangement:
Data is stored in filesystems on LVM volumes over RAID1. While RAID1
presents some protection from disk failure, it gives no protection
against data corruption due to flaky hardware or data loss caused by
fire or theft.
Therefore I have an offsite backup arrangement. This consists of two
rsync backups. One backup goes to a local disk (different disk
manufacturer, different disk controller) and the other rsync backup is
to a disk at work. This works a bit but the outgoing bandwidth on my
cable connection is low (about 0.3 Mbps). If I make a large change to
the machine (e.g. dist-upgrade) I physically swap the home and work
backup disks (this is the main reason for keeping the local backup
too). This at least allows me to place an upper limit on the amount
of data I would lose in the case of (e.g.) a fire.
However, there are two respects in which I think some improvement
would be useful:
(1) Quite a lot of the files on my system are files I never expect to
change again. I plan to write a few scripts which will tell me if a
file that hadn't been modified in, say, two years was in fact recently
modified. This could give me early warning that the disk controller
has gone berserk (again).
Isn't this what the file alteration monitor is for?
(2) It would be useful to have a historic backup capability too (e.g.
the way the filesystem looked yesterday, last week, last month and a
year ago), at least for filesystems like /home.
I think it's extreme going back farther than a month. A
grandfather/father/son scheme tailored to your requirements should be
more than sufficient. But, it's your system...
What are good solutions for doing (2)? (Please only recommend
software you're using yourself :)
I like backup-manager for SOHO backups. I've been through duplicity,
backup-ninja and possibly others. Once I resolved A REALLY ANNOYING BUG,
it works very well. I, too, do offsite backups (via scp). backup-manager
fails gracefully (I changed the sshd port thus defeating
backup-manager's ability to successfully connect via scp. This only left
the backup on the local machine waiting to be copied to the remote
machine once I updated the configuration). I also like that the email
logs contain enough, but not too much info.
On the downside, I don't think backup-manager has a calendar of
sufficient duration to handle your "last month, year ago" requirement.
You may have to solve that via cron.
You should be prepared to try several of the available backup packages
and decide for yourself. You're obviously the type who likes to be
"fer-sure, fer-sure".
Cheers,
Reply to: