[wellylug] what to back up?

Carl Turney c.turney at orcon.net.nz
Sat Aug 25 10:22:24 NZST 2007


Hi Nic,

> What else would you experts suggest? Would you bother with /etc, or just 
> take some key files?

I'm taking an extremely conservative approach, and have a system that 
usually does a total mirror backup in less than 5 minutes, and =can= be 
up and running after a crash in less than 5 minutes (if the box itself 
is functional and I have the backup on-site, which isn't really good 
form)...

I don't use tapes, CDs, or DVDs.  I've got all hard disks (the 
booting/running one and the backups) in removable "slide in-slide out" 
trays.  Maybe you can insert & remove the backup disks while the system 
is still on, maybe not.  That's for others to answer.

My backup disks are partitioned etc. to match the booting/running disk. 
   I don't have LVM, so you may have to work around for a more elegant 
solution.  I'm still using IDE and have them as Primary Master and 
Secondary Master, so no need to even change jumpers about, to turn a 
backup into a new  booting/running.  After a one-off total tar backup, I 
do the following on a regular basis:

insert the next scheduled backup hard disk (I alternate between two)
Mount the backup's boot partition on /mnt/backboot
Mount the backup's root partition on /mnt/backroot
rsync -aHvx --delete /boot/ /mnt/backboot
rsync -aHvx --delete // /mnt/backroot
unmount the hard disk partitions and remove it
store it off site

"restoring" is as easy as pulling out the dead hard disk and putting the 
most recent backup in the Primary Master slot.  Not a bad way to test 
the backup, and prove to yourself that even the last little change was 
copied.  I've even used this system to migrate from a smaller hard disk 
to a larger one.

Carl




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