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al3 - 23.07.2006, 00:14 Uhr
Titel: How do you backup each week?

I can get all my data on one CD (with 300mb to spare!). After I do mysqldumps of various databases and maybe zip up some digital pix folders, I fire up K3b and drag these folders to the 'burn' screen: home, etc, boot, /var/www (where I have lots of php code). I burn the CD and put it in a safe place. I do this each Sunday.

It doesn't take long but I wonder if there is a better way?

What do you folks who don't have huge amounts of stuff do?

Al

michael7 - 23.07.2006, 02:03 Uhr
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I have a second hard drive installed in this Linux box and I use rdiff-backup to backup the data on my master HD to the slave HD. Here's my source of information:

http://www.kanotix.com/FAQ-id_cat-70.html

h2 - 23.07.2006, 05:00 Uhr
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rdiff-backup done through a shell script to an external firewire drive, currently.

markb - 23.07.2006, 10:37 Uhr
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michael7 hat folgendes geschrieben::

I have a second hard drive installed in this Linux box and I use rdiff-backup to backup the data on my master HD to the slave HD.

I do the same but I use rsnapshot. Google for it. It also pulls data from my wife's winxp PC (via cwRsync).

stryder - 23.07.2006, 11:03 Uhr
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I have 2 computers. For my work files at any given time there should be 2 copies of the same file in 2 drives. Completed jobs are backed up in CDs. For my system I back it up as a tar ball once a month.

egal - 23.07.2006, 14:59 Uhr
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Hi,

rsnapshot (for diff. backups/versions) & rsync-script (for 1:1 data) daily to a NAS;
additional monthly to dvd.

kb0hae - 24.07.2006, 01:22 Uhr
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Hi. Well, when I completed what I call a basic install (a fresh install of Kanotix, getting all hardware to work, plus doing an update in Kpackage , and installing what I consider the most essential programs and updates) I do a backup with partimage to another partition. When I do this I have partimage split the backup into files that are 675MB. These are written to CD-R disks. The partition is is Fat32, and is for all my data (pictures, documents etc...Fat32 so I can access the data in Windows or Kanotix, though I mostly use Kanotix these days) All data on this drive (except the Kanotix backup) is backed up to CD-RW once a week, and to CD-R every 4 weeks depending on how much has changed. I never throw out the old CD-R backups, so I always have that data available in case a file (or files) gets corupted or accidentally deleted.

In the last 7 years I have only lost a few files (I have only been running Kanotix for about 14 monthes or so, in a dual boot with Windows), and if I do something that breaks my Kanotix install, I can be back to the "basic install" in less than 10 minutes. With Windows, it takes about 6 hours or so to install drivers, and programs

Swynndla - 24.07.2006, 03:37 Uhr
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Partimage is nice, and it may be able to back up your windows partition too.

But I am a big fan of automated backups ... I have 4 low-end pcs, and it's a pain to manually back them all up ... but rdiff-backup automatically backs all of them up to a hd every night (and does incremental backups so it's fast).

kilgoretrout - 24.07.2006, 04:57 Uhr
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I created some backup scripts using tar and rsysnc which are automatically run as cron jobs at various intervals. Once a month, I have a major backup script that I manually run which backs up to an external hard drive. I have also used partimage in the past for certain backups.

2radical - 24.07.2006, 21:27 Uhr
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I use rsync -av /home/username /media/hda5 which is a separate partition. For some reason I haven't been able to understand, backups to CD or DVD rw's hasn't been entirely dependable, hence my reason for putting them to an extended partition. I wouldn't recommend depending solely on discs to anybody, although I do have both. Too many weird things can happen. With a live-cd one can access a partition to restore files. Backups & restores are quicker that way too. YMMV....

hubi - 24.07.2006, 21:44 Uhr
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To add my 2 cents:

- For mission critical tasks I use rdiff-backup to harddisk (ext3 or ReiserFS to keep user-rights). It's incremental.
- For backups to USB-Sticks or CDs/DVDs or Win-Networks I use tar (to keep user-rights).
- If I want password-protection, I put the tar into a rar.
- For simple backups at home I use rsync: it just is not incremental and I have lost data out of stupidity already.

hubi

2radical - 24.07.2006, 22:58 Uhr
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OHHH I have a question--once somebody has backed up with rsync or rdiff if you switch commands does it override OK?

h2 - 25.07.2006, 00:25 Uhr
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rdiff is not a command, it's a program, it creates an rdiffbackup backup, so to speak. To restore you need to use rdiff-backup, it's not like a tar ball that anything can open or read. Although you can restore individual files by dragging and dropping if you want.

So no, I'd guess definitely not, if you use rdiff-backup, that's your backup program, it doesn't interchange with an rsync command, though I'm sure it uses rsync as a core feaure, I'd guess anyway.

gardyloo - 25.07.2006, 02:52 Uhr
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Zitat:

To restore the LATEST backup, it's certainly possible to simply copy everything where you want it, since rdiff-backup creates an exact copy of everything. To restore earlier versions of the files, though, you do have to use the rdiff-backup program itself, since it has to do some fancy parsing and figure out incrementals. So I'd say that anything CAN open or read the vast majority of the backup.

hubi - 25.07.2006, 03:18 Uhr
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If I understand correctly: yes, one can read "rdiff-backups" just as you would read normal folders or files. But: the incremental informations or how I should call them are saved seperatly. And one should not fiddle around with these folders and files, they are backup only.

Reading "man rdiff-backup" is really a treasure. I like that application very much for doing backups.

hubi

2radical - 25.07.2006, 04:08 Uhr
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crap--I posted a response but it didn't appear even tho it said it was--oh well I'll see if this one does.

2radical - 25.07.2006, 04:21 Uhr
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crap--I posted a response but it didn't appear even tho it said it was--oh well I'll see if this one does.

"rdiff is not a command, it's a program, it creates an rdiffbackup backup, so to speak. To restore you need to use rdiff-backup, it's not like a tar ball that anything can open or read. Although you can restore individual files by dragging and dropping if you want. "

That's what I thought--but at the same time--data is data--so I was curious about whether it made a difference what "program" was used to transfer it from one place to another, if indeed rsync is core to rdiff. Front end back end, blahblahblah.

h2 - 25.07.2006, 06:37 Uhr
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while data is data, think of it as jpg type data versus gif type data, both image data, but not interchangeable

rdiff is smart, and adds a lot of its own stuff, that's how it knows time restores for example, where you can select a date and restore from there.

try it, you'll see, the rdiff backup stuff creates rdiff backup folders that contain the data for differential backups and restores. That's 'proprietary' so to speak, to rdiff-backup

2radical - 25.07.2006, 06:58 Uhr
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So if I want to try rdiff-backup, do I have to wipe what I have? Rsync seemed like such a simple thing compared to making a bunch of --excludes, etc.

h2 - 25.07.2006, 08:24 Uhr
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2radical: use the simple version then learn the complicated version, that's my advice, one thing at a time I'd say.

Some of this stuff takes time to get your hands around, I played with rdiff for a while, and found some really nasty bugs with it, but, like you, in the process of doing that, I learned a lot. Now it all works, I've got it all scripted, so it's just running a command. The globbing file lists are done one time then you never think about it again.

gardyloo - 25.07.2006, 21:00 Uhr
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There are also some graphical frontends to rdiff-backup: one called rdiffweb (which I've never got to work), and one called "keep". The latter is specific to KDE (or as specific as the KDE/Gnome/XFCE sharing-of-apps situation allows). I've got that to work several times (though not very recently). Keep isn't as full-featured as the whole command-line rdiff-backup, but it's easy enough to set includes/excludes, and set up a basic schedule (and keep to it!) for backups. If you can easily install it, I'd recommend it.
Otherwise, check out the command-line version of rdiff-backup. As a couple of posters have intimated, it's VERY well documented, with excellent examples.

2radical - 26.07.2006, 02:38 Uhr
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Today I removed my rsync backup on hda5 & replaced it with a rdiff-backup one. I used this command line to backup: rdiff-backup --exclude '/tmp/*' --exclude '/proc/*' --exclude '/sys/*' --exclude '/media/*/*' / /media/hda5/backups
Things went well with no error messages, but I'm not sure if I got the restore command right for the target. Would it be (from live-cd) rdiff-backup -r now /media/hda5/backups / *OR*
rdiff-backup -r now /media/hda5/backups /media/hda1 (which is what konqueror shows)

# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs devmode=0666 0 0
/dev/hda1 / reiserfs defaults 0 1
/dev/hda2 /home reiserfs defaults 0 2
/dev/hda3 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hda5 /media/hda5 reiserfs defaults 0 0
/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0

Swynndla - 26.07.2006, 03:39 Uhr
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2radical ... it would be the later one ... ie:
rdiff-backup -r now /media/hda5/backups /media/hda1

And you'd need to mount both partitions before you could restore.

I would strongly recommend that you do try a restore ... as there is nothing worse than thinking you are able to restore and then getting into problems when you really need to restore. Backup any important data separately though ... don't put 100% faith in rdiff-backup as you can easily stuff it up ... the command line is powerful, and can do bad things just as powerfully as good things.

If your partition isn't empty, rdiff-backup will not do that restore just incase you didn't want to overwrite anything ... it'll say that if you really want to do that then use the --force command ... ie:
rdiff-backup -r now --force /media/hda5/backups /media/hda1

So I'd recommend that you take a rdiff-backup backup, just a file, and restore, and check that the file is now the original. Maybe add a file and delete a different file before the restore.

2radical - 26.07.2006, 06:18 Uhr
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Zitat:

So I'd recommend that you take a rdiff-backup backup, just a file, and restore, and check that the file is now the original. Maybe add a file and delete a different file before the restore.

Just so I understand what you're saying--
Make 2 test files, say like [testfile1 & testfile2] in /home/joyboy/documents then delete one of them to test if both the backup & restore works? Thank you very much for your advise Smilie

Swynndla - 26.07.2006, 06:37 Uhr
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Yes. You should have a play, until you get to the stage of confidently saying to yourself "shall I try out e17? ... no worries, I can can easily restore if I might bork my system!"

(assuming that you've backed up your entire root partition to a larger partition)

2radical - 26.07.2006, 07:05 Uhr
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Zitat:

(assuming that you've backed up your entire root partition to a larger partition)

My hda5 partition is 5GB (47% usage) with root & home. Thanks again...