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Backing Up is Hard to Do?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the especially-if-you're-lazy dept.

Joe Barr writes "NewsForge is running a story this morning on a personal hardware/software backup solution for your Linux desktop (NewsForge is owned by Slashdot's parent OSTG). The solution doesn't require a SCSI controller, or tape drive, or the ability to grok a scripting language or archiving tool to work, either. It's based on point-and-click free software. Plus it includes a dead-parrot joke by Linus Torvalds."

4 of 299 comments (clear)

  1. My choice for backups: by Megaslow · · Score: 4, Informative

    I use rsnapshot to automate my backups to another host. Works like a dream, providing multiple virtual point in time copies (just like similar functionality from Network Appliance, etc.).

  2. Rsync or mkzftree for backups by ceswiedler · · Score: 4, Informative

    The best way to create differential backups under Unix is with hardlinked snapshots. Easy Automated Snapshot-Style Backups with Rsync has a good explanation of how to do this. The best part is that restoring is as simple as copying a file. Each snapshot is a folder hierarchy on disk, and you can browse through any snapshot and find files you want.

    One small improvement over rsync (IMO) is to use mkzftree from the zisofs-tools package. It's designed to create compressed ISO filesystems which will be transparently uncompressed when mounted under Linux (and other supporting operating systems; it's a documented ISO extension). mkzftree supports an option for creating hardlinked forest (like cp -al and rsync), with the advantage that the files are compressed, thus saving space. ISO isn't quite as flexible as ext2 for things like hardlinks, so what I do is have DVD-sized disk images formatted as ext2 to store the snapshots. I burn the disk images directly to DVD; each one can hold ten or twenty compressed snapshots (of my data anyway). The disadvantage is that I can't read the files directly (because they're compressed, and the transparent decompression only works with ISO) but it's easy to decompress a file or folder to /tmp using mkzftree if I need to restore something.

    It shouldn't be hard to make the transparent decompression code work with other filesystems than ISO, as long as they're mounted read-only. The files are just gzipped with a header block indicating they are compressed.

  3. My solution: backuppc by vlad_petric · · Score: 4, Informative
    It's the Swiss Army knife of backing up. It can backup stuff over samba, ssh/rsync, ssh/rsyncd, ssh/tar, direct file access (in other words it doesn't need special software installed on the clients). It keeps a single copy of multiple, identical files, so backing up a bunch of Windoze machines can be done with decent amount of space.

    Restore is also straightforward - it can be done in place, or by downloading a zip/tar file.

    --

    The Raven

  4. Re:Backup painful? by khrtt · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here's my solution

    Backup:
    tar -czf backup.tar.gz /home /etc
    Then use k3b or something to record the file to CD

    Restore:
    Take a wild guess:-)

    Restore individual files:
    Use mc to browse the tarball (slow but works)

    Now, do you see me bragging about this trivial shit on slashdot? No?

    Eh, wait...