backup systems. (Use rdiff-backup!!)

[ron.peterson at yellowbank.com]

On Fri, Apr 11, 2003 at 02:46:53PM -0400, Rich Braun wrote:
> > On the other hand, the entire contents of /etc are around 16MB, and
> > compressed with gzip -9 it's only 3MB; so, why not just back up the
> > whole thing?  Even if you back up 1000 systems, this is only 3GB of
> > data, which is less than 2% of the capacity of a single 160GB SDLT
> > tape.
> 
> That sums up my whole head-scratching response to the argument in favor of
> excluding portions of a system from routine backups.

Different backups for different purposes.  I think backing up mp3's is
certainly worthwhile.  It takes awhile to rip that much stuff.  That's a
different problem than catastrophic system failure, though.  Which is
different than keeping long-term archives of your significant personal
work.

I haven't read every post in this thread, so sorry if I'm being
redundant, but I think it's worth mentioning rdiff-backup:

http://rdiff-backup.stanford.edu/

Get a big cheap IDE drive.  If you can put it in a machine remote from
the one you're backing up, that's best.  Use rdiff-backup to backup
whatever you define to be significant.  Files that don't change won't
get backed up over and over again, so you may well consider doing a
comprehensive backup, unless you churn a lot of big files.  Backup your
rdiff-backup data to tape sometimes.  Keep at least one comprehensive
tape backup somewhere physically safe and seperate from your computer.

You'll love rdiff-backup when you want to restore something.  Just

rdiff-backup --restore-as-of 3D me at host.domain::/somewhere/remote /somewhere/local

Lots more fun than screwing around with tapes, that's for damn sure.

You can keep your rdiff-backup archive pruned with --remove-older-than

-- 
Ron Peterson                   -o)
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