Backing Up is Hard to Do?

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."

Comments

Easy

[harlows_monkeys]

Here's what I do:

1. Reach over and plug in USB 120 gig drive.

2. Become root, and go to /root.

3. Type "./backup.sh".

That is a script that goes to all the directories I care about (/root, /etc, /srv/www, /usr/local/share, and my home directory), and basically does this for each drive.

cd $DIR rsync -avz --progress --delete . $MNT/$DIR

where $MNT is where the USB drive mounts.

4. Unmount the drive and unplug it.

This is quick (a few minutes) and easy, and since rsync reads the files from the last backup to figure out what needs to be copied, it should catch it if I develop a bad sector on the USB drive.

I left it out in the above, but the backup script also, before doing the rsyncs, lists my crontab into a file, so that gets backed up.

Heh, noob mistake

[stratjakt]

He plugs in a USB drive, runs KDar to fill it with stuff.

Now, when his system borks, how does he restore? Or did he think that far ahead?

I skimmed the article, and nothing about restoring. Your backup is useless if you can't restore it.

Does he have to install and configure linux, X, and KDE just to be able to access KDar?

Forget all this jibberjabber, and emerge or apt-get or type whatever command you use to get Mondo/Mindi. Just perfect for home boxes, and most other use.

Burn yourself a bootable CD that can recreate your box, just like Norton Ghost for Linux. I have it write out the iso files and boot disk for /bin /usr, etc, which I then burn onto a couple of DVD9-Rs. I can run this to recreate my system.

I run a seperate job to backup /home.

Whats important, is to seperate system from user data when it comes to backups. This also forms my "archiving" system, since old "/home" backups stick around, so if I want to take a look at the version of foo.c I was writing 6 months ago, it's easy enough to find.

As much as I love Mondo/Mindi, it's not the be-all and end-all. AMANDA is a better choice for a corporate (more elaborate) environment. It's a PITA and not worth getting involved with for a simple user box.

And that is easy

[flibuste]

I've read the whole article. My! You'd better be a geek to have to cope with all the little worries..

Getting cheap AND working hardware on E-Bay. My mom will not do it for the sake of her computer.

32GB limitation by jumpers. Not obvious for an end-user.

Booting up *nixes from various drives in order to access the limited drive, then fiddle with partitions. I still don't dare touching my configs for more than OS at a time. Let alone various OSes on various drives.

Compiling KDart?! Compiling what? What do I have to do? "Comp..??" You have to admit, it's not for the dummy kind.

Definitely not "Backup made easy" but "Made not so expensive" since the price tag still reaches 300$ (drive + box from e-bay + screws + shots of valium to calm you down when your machine refuses to boot after all the offence you just did to it).

I bought Linux Hacks. This, Webmin and a remote machine accessible using Samba or sftp does the daily backup just fine.