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On 16 August 2010 03:15, Alex Schuster <wonko@×××××××××.org> wrote: |
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> Nganon <nganon+gentoo@×××××.com <nganon%2Bgentoo@×××××.com>> writes: |
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> |
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> > Hello all, |
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> > |
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> > My first post on the list. I thought I would start with something |
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> > that I started |
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> > to think of as 'essential' after losing 90GB of data. Now I have two |
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> > main questions in mind: what to and how to back up on gentoo most |
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> > efficiently. |
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> > |
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> > 1. Apart from users' home directories and the followings, what should |
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> > be backed |
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> > up on a gentoo machine? |
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> > /etc/portage/ |
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> > /root |
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> > /var/lib/portage |
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> > ...? |
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> |
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> Wouldn't it be easier to just backup the whole / directory? |
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> Excluding /home, /usr/portage and /var/tmp/portage? |
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> |
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> Yes but that would not solve my huge backup file problem, would it? |
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> > 2. Erm..okay, I am gonna say, what magic I want and then ask your way. |
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> > I first started making gzipped tar balls as follows: |
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> > |
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> > tar czpf /media/backups/userA-`date +%Y.%m.%d`.tgz -X |
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> > userA-excludelist /etc |
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> > |
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> > But these can get huge especially for home dirs. I also want safe dvd |
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> > copies. |
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> > Though I can find enough space on the external drives, I don't trust |
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> > them any more. See above..sigh..(No I recovered about one third of it |
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> > with testdisk/photorec |
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> > which names them as file000001 file00002.. and half them are zero |
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> > sized.. which |
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> > quite justifies my agony) |
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> |
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> Okay, but I don't trust DVDs. Although DVD-RAM is quite safe I heard. |
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> But external disks are flexible, offer more space, and if you want more |
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> security, just use yet another drive, so you are safe even if your main |
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> drive and a backup drive fails. |
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> |
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> I did not give a thought to DVD-RAM before. Will give it a try. Thanks. |
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I suggest you have a look at rdiff-backup. It gives you a 1:1 copy of |
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> the source directory, but also does incremental backups, which are |
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> stored (in compressed form) in an additional folder in the destination |
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> directory. I would use this at least for things like /etc, where I |
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> sometimes might want to retrieve an old version of a file. Similar to |
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> your approach with big tar files and small ones containing the |
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> increments. |
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> |
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> I just emerged and tried it. Seems like incremental backups was what I |
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was looking for. But from what I see, it is mirroring the src to dist and |
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storing the metadata/stats of increments as archived. Maybe there is an |
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option to archive increments along side their metadata as well. I will keep |
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playing with it. |
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|
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I use a script for my backups, which I mentioned here on 2010-05-07, |
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> subject 'Snackup'. It optionally creates LVM snapshots so I can make |
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> backups from the running system, even if the source directory is |
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> altered during the backup. This works on LVM only, though, and also |
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> allows the volume to be LUKS-encrypted. It does backups by rdiff-backup, |
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> rsync, cp, tar or dd. It may be overkill when not using the LVM |
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> features, but still I suggest to use some script for backups, so one |
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> does not always have to remember the backup commands. When I want to |
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> update my backup, I enter something like 'snackup boot root home src', |
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> and the script backs up my boot, root and home partition in the |
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> background, and creates tar files each directory in /usr/src. |
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> |
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> I found the thread and script. I am gonna take a look at it. Once I decide |
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on |
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how to backup, I am gonna cron a script for it. |
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> > By the way, since I want dvd backups as well, and I want to use +rw |
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> > dvds so I can overwrite old backup after a while, what is best way of |
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> > ensuring the integrity and safety of them. Is it a good idea to use |
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> > truecrypt containers? Or nothing tops signing and encrypting with gpg? |
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> |
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> I'd use DVD-RAM. The media is a little more expensive, but AFAIK they |
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> were made with long-time backups in mind. And access is much easier, |
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> you just copy the files as to an external drive, no need to burn ISOs. |
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> |
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> Wonko |
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> |
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> |
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Thanks for the advises. |