BackingUP!

[Robert Meyer]

My personal preference for backup is 'dump/restore'.  They were designed
primarily as a 'disaster recovery' backup system for recovering entire
filesystems in the event of a crash, rather than pulling files back after
users delete them.  Dump tends to get all of the file types and permissions
correct so that a restore puts the filesystem in exactly the state that
it was in at the time of the backup.

If you're just trying to get stuff back that gets deleted, then 'tar' is
the better tool.

Just my 2 cents...

Cheers!

Bob
--- JJ Neff <jjneff at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Thanks to Justin, I am now a backing up fool!  Justin was able to loan an
> older
> external SCSI tape device and I was able to scrounge up parts for it. 
> Tonight
> I have a tar command actually backing up my home dirs on my server.  I am one
> step closer to being able to format this thing!  
> 
> I may actually wait to format now since I want to see if I can get a real
> backup rotation going.  THe LDP site has a very easy to follow cron rotation
> to
> use in the Redhat guide...
>
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/solrhe/Securing-Optimizing-Linux-RH-Edition-v1.3/chap29sec306.html
> 
> I'm using tar because I want to backup my home and etc and opt and maybe some
> var OK maybe a FULL backup , then I want to format and install a diff distro
> (Debian on my server, mandrake 9.1 on my workstation.
> 
> SO I figure tar is the easiest way to get the files archived then off again.
> as
> long as I have an /export/home dir on my newly installed system.  I may want
> to
> dabble with other backup tools that use DBs (we use a very involved backup
> utility, Arcserve, at work) but I didn't know what to do with the DB when I
> formatted.  I would have to reread all the tapes back in to rebuild the DB,
> seemed like a waste when I know what I want to backup and restore.  But I
> suppose in the future if I want to search for a specific file a DB would be
> more helpful..  Oh well I'll learn, any advice is welcome.
> 
> Getting the tapoe device was an absolute breeze, I was worried becasueI have
> an
> Adaptec 2940UW and I was afraid I had used both teh 50 and 68 pin internal
> ports making my external useless, but I had used a narrwo to wide adapter on
> my
> cdrom to keep from having to use the 50 pin port.  So all I had to do was
> reconfigure the SCSI term settings inteh adadpter and set the SCSI id on the
> device and configure that IDs specific settings in the adapter and reboot one
> more time.  One complete reboot and I was back up with a tape device.  Man
> they
> say Linux is Hard :-)
> 
> Figuring out all the cmd line switches for tar was a littel touhg but I
> followed the examples in the LDP guides, read the man pag and in under one
> hour
> from starting have all my home drives backed up.  I going to backup my full
> system on a seperate tape excluding the home dirs.  Then I can finally use
> all
> 18GB of space instead of using software Raid 1 to try to give me some fault
> tolerance.  I can finally store a lot of files on my drive and not worry too
> much since I am backing up.  Man what a weight off my shoulders.  OK they may
> fail when I need them but heck it's only MP3s movies and pics of my son that
> I
> have on CD...
> 
> :-)
> 
> Please any backup suggestions or links are welcome.
> 
> JJN
> 
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=====
Bob Meyer
Knightwing Communications, Inc.
36 Cayuga Blvd
Depew, NY 14043
Phone: 716-308-8931 or 716-681-0076
Meyer_RM at Yahoo.com

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