Re: [gentoo-user] How to build a time machine on Gentoo

[Enrico Weigelt]

* Nganon <nganon+gentoo@×××××.com> wrote:

Hi,

> My first post on the list. I thought I would start with something that I
> started
> to think of as 'essential' after losing 90GB of data. Now I have two main
> questions in mind: what to and how to back up on gentoo most efficiently.

I'm using a little script like that:

    #!/bin/bash
    cd /var/backup/blackwidow || exit 1

    DATE=`date +%F-%H-%M-%S`

    rsync --exclude-from /scr/etc/backup-blackwidow.exclude     \
	  -avz blackwidow:/ /var/backup/blackwidow/ROOT         \
        --backup                                              \
        "--backup-dir=/var/backup/blackwidow/BACKUP-$DATE"    \
        --delete                                              \
        --delete-excluded                                     \
        --delay-updates                                       \
        --progress                                            \


(of course with a carefully maintained exclude file ;-p)
This doesnt make a real rotating backup, but stores all files that
get overwritten into their own directory (named by the current date).
And from time to time, I'm cleaning up the backup volume and look
for things that I still might need.

For things I'd like to keep an history (eg. /etc) I'm using git, and
pushing the repo to a remote server (denying non-fastfoward updates
there, so an theorectical highjacker cannot destroy my history)

For really long-term backups with bigger content (that might be
too big for git), you could also give venti+vac (from plan9port)
a try. I'm using it for storing larger media files (videos, etc)
in my MediaCloud platform.
 
> 1. Apart from users' home directories and the followings, what should be
> backed
> up on a gentoo machine?
> /etc/portage/
> /root
> /var/lib/portage
> ...?

Depends on how long the recovery may take. For example, if you can
afford recompiling world (or have another compatible image somewhere
else), you can exclude everything where packages are installed
(bindirs, libdirs, /usr/share, etc, etc) - assuming everything's
installed by portage.

> Though I can find enough space on the external drives, I don't trust them
> any more. See above..sigh..(No I recovered about one third of it with
> testdisk/photorec
> which names them as file000001 file00002.. and half them are zero sized..
> which
> quite justifies my agony)

Make multiple copies on different media (eg. different servers).
 

cu
-- 
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 Enrico Weigelt, metux IT service -- http://www.metux.de/

 phone:  [phone]  email: weigelt@×××××.de
 mobile: [phone]  icq:   210169427         skype: nekrad666
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