Re: [gentoo-server] Backup software

[Ben Munat]

Nigel,

I'm still very new to how backup software works, but Box Backup sounds 
very similar to rsnapshot. That's a backup program that uses rsync over 
ssh to make incremental backups of remote filesystems (or pieces 
thereof). It has the same hourly, daily, weekly, monthly backup points 
that it sounds like Box Backup has. And, it's in portage.

Not that I'm trying to talk you out of Box Backup, I'd just rather use 
something in portage if it's close enough in features. It's only 
partially a matter of the simplicity of install for me... portage also 
(generally) keeps up with security holes so that I don't have to 
remember to check up on my apps outside of portage.

Now -- as information that clarifies my needs and also as another 
question of strategy -- I will be backing up a single, remote, rented 
webserver with whatever package I wind up using. I don't have and can't 
afford another server to back up to (though a mirror server would be 
nice some day). So, I'm figuring on pulling my snapshots down to my 
local gentoo box.

Even though we have at least a dozen live sites on our server, we're not 
using much space on it... about 5 gig total. I looked and I have about 
50 gigs available just in my /home partition. So, I'm thinking that I 
should just backup the server's whole drive. The question is, is this 
worth the trouble... if the server's hard drive crashed, would I be able 
to restore my whole setup from the backup to a new harddrive and have a 
working system again?

Hmmm, now that I take another look at the rsnapshot man page, that seems 
to be one way in which Box Backup is better than rsnapshot... there's no 
mention of recovery at all. It seems it's intended to just take 
snapshots of your system and it's up to you to figure out what to do 
with the snapshot if you need it.

Well, in any case... my needs are fairly simple... don't really need the 
encyption or to allow anyone other than myself to make backups.

Any and all comments appreciated.

Ben

Nigel Marsh wrote:
> On Friday 22 Oct 2004 15:15, Jose Gonzalez Gomez wrote:
>
>>Nigel Marsh wrote:
>>
>>>Jose,
>>>
>>>[...]
>>>As to reverting to a given date. The short answer (unusual for me ;)) is
>>>No... The longer answer is, according the developments on the mailing
>>>list it will do soon.
>>
>>    Well, I had that feeling. The final question: let's say that
>>somebody deletes a bunch of files that shouldn't be deleted. You told
>>that the backup system informs of changes every hour or so, so I assume
>>those files will also be deleted on the backed up system, am I wrong? If
>>this is the case, and you notice the problem a few hours later, is there
>>any way to recover those files? That's why I was asking about recovering
>>the state for a given date/time.
>
>
> No, they will be kept on the backup server and be marked as having been
> deleted on the client.  When the allocated space is filled up on the backup
> server then the oldest deleted files will be deleted from the server first.
> So the time a deleted file remains on the server is down to allocated drive
> space and is analogous to tape. When you run out of tape space, you either
> add more storage or you start rotating backup media.
>
> Also old versions of files are kept so that  you can jump back say 3 weeks to
> an old version of a file.
>
> If you needed to know more about the internals of it then the mailing list,
> which is a low volume with the odd flurry of activity, would be your best
> bet.  Questions are generally answered pretty quickly.
>
>
>>>On the server side, you have no access to this data. You need to keep a
>>>client key safe to rebuild a totally dead client so that it can restore
>>>and start again where you left off.
>>>
>>>
>>>Sorry, got carried away and probably went way over what was needed to
>>>answer your question. Must be this new coffee I'm drinking.  ;)
>>
>>    Not at all. Your answer has been very informative, and will help me
>>a lot in making my mind in my final decission about backup software.
>>Thanks a lot for your kindly response... and tell us about that new
>>coffee, I think it may help us on overnight system failures ;o)
>
>
> I don't know, it is in a silver unnamed bag and I got 10kg cheap from a car
> boot sale. :)
>
> It's very good though.
>
>
>>>Nige
>>
>>    Best regards
>>    Jose
>
>
> Nige
>