[TAG] Backup software/strategies

[Ben Okopnik]

On Wed, Jul 11, 2007 at 05:44:15PM +0200, Ren?? Pfeiffer wrote:
> On Jul 11, 2007 at 0924 -0400, Ben Okopnik appeared and said:
> > All of us know - at least I hope we do - that we should all be doing
> > regular backups; that's a given. Chances are, though, that we've all
> > skipped one or two (or more) on the schedule [...]
> 
> Most people have cronjobs that automatically skip backups, so they don't
> need to worry. ;)
> 
> I've given backup strategies a lot of thinking lately and I am still not
> happy with some solutions and tools.

[nod] That's where I am as well. I've been doing this iterative "pick a
backup strategy, wrestle with it for a while, give up in frustration,
let time pass until frustration level decreases to manageable level,
repeat" thing for years now, and haven't come up with anything truly
solid or positive - so it's been a "whenever memory and capability
coincide" method by default -and I'm extremely dissatisfied with that.

> > [...] Can anyone here think of a sensible backup plan for the
> > situation that I've described - laptop, external backup, arbitrary
> > schedule - and some way to set up a schedule that work with that?
> 
> You could use a combination of rsync, OpenSSH and Perl in order to set
> up a rsyncd on your laptop, have a backup machine look for your laptop
> on the network and whenever the server sees it create an SSH tunnel and
> grab the latest deltas. http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/ has something
> like this according to its feature list:
> 
> "Supports mobile environments where laptops are only intermittently
> connected to the network and have dynamic IP addresses (DHCP)."

The problem with that is that I don't have a "home base" - it's just not
feasible to have an always-on connection on the boat - and using space
on someone else's machine isn't really feasible. At that point, my ideas
run off in the direction of buying rack space, and all the hassle that
entails - especially since St. Augustine, for all its charm, is the
technological backwoods where the hoot owls trod the chickens.

As a result, it never comes to pass. And I'm still searching for a
workable strategy. :/
 
> Mostly I stick to mirrored repositories because
> I don't want to go through several incrementals when restoring
> something. Most of the time I need to restore everything and don't need
> incrementals. :)

In my case, that's not the usual situation; in fact, restoring a
complete backup would only be necessary in case of catastrophic failure
or a new laptop. 99% of the time, I'd want to restore a specific file or
two.


-- 
* Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *