On Thu, Feb 20, 2003 at 03:55:53PM -0500, Brad Penner wrote: > So I've decided to switch to a disk-based backup solution. What is > a good method to do a daily backup of say 10 solaris/bsd/linux > servers to a single linux box? I could just rsync I suppose, but > there has to be a way to archive stuff daily without wasting space > with a full copy of each server every day.
Look at rdiff-backup. In short is seems to be an rsync that will let you look at files from earlier backups. It looks very cool. I haven't played with it yet myself because it doesn't ~quite~ do what I want, but it still might be useful. If I understand it, it really wants to backup everything. Yes, you can exclude files from the backup but then it thinks they didn't exist as of the backup and if it finds them during a restore they will be deleted. The obvious work around is to only backup whole directory trees. What I want is an added feature that might be called "digest standins", that is, files that the rdiff-backup knows about, but doesn't backup as long as they don't change. If one of these files changes, it wouldn't match the digest, so it would get backed and no longer have a standin. The use would then be to backup a new computer right after the OS is installed and mark everything as a digest standin, which will make it relatively small. Then do regular backups. The digests won't be touched as long as the file they describe isn't touched. This way an entire computer, the whole OS and everything, could be backed up. If the computer dies, get new hardware, install the OS as you did the first time, then restore. Presto, you are back where you were, but in a fraction the space. -kb -- redhat-list mailing list unsubscribe mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?subject=unsubscribe https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
