Re: Backup script question...

[Robert Citek <rwcitek@alum.calberkeley.org>]

On Tuesday, Jun 29, 2004, at 14:28 US/Central, Ken Keefe wrote:
> What other suggestions do people have for backing stuff up?

You have a number of options:
- rsync/tar to a local, but temporarily mounted USB2/FireWire drive
- rsync/tar/scp over netcat/rsh/ssh/nfs/smb to another computer on the 
LAN
- rsync/tar/scp over ssh to another computer on the Internet

My personal preference is to rsync to the local USB2/FireWire drive.  
In short, it works like this:
- mount the drive read-only to /mnt/backup
- via a cronjob as root ...
   - unmount the drive from /mnt/backup
   - mount the drive read/write to /mnt/rw-backup
   - rsync your data to the drive (rsync -a /path/to/target 
/mnt/rw-backup/ )
   - unmount the drive from /mnt/rw-backup
   - mount the drive read-only to /mnt/backup

One advantage of this method is that the drive is always available on 
/mnt/backup (except during backups) in the event that you or a user 
needs to get to a previous version or a deleted file quickly.   But 
because the drive is mounted read-only, nothing can be added/deleted, 
which protects you from the 'rm -rf /' worry.  During the backup, 
/mnt/backup is merely unavailable.  This is also a relatively 
inexpensive solution because you only need a drive and an enclosure, 
not a completely separate system.  This method may also be faster than 
a network solution, because the drive is not competing with network 
traffic.

Let the list know what you finally choose.

Regards,
- Robert


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