On Tue, 5 Sep 2006, Phil Howard wrote:
> If you want all those benefits of restore, and don't mind having a disk
> with a filesystem already on it, then why not use something like rsync
> to make backups?  As long as you aren't working with over about a million
> individual files, it works great.  It makes a replica of a filesystem or
> multi-filesystem tree, and gives you direct access to every individual
> file for restore purpose.  Use multiple disks to make multiple backups.
> When backing up to a disk previously used, rsync avoids the writing work
> for files not changed (according to matching meta data, though this can
> be turned off).  And rsync works well over a network via ssh.
> 
> So I can't really understand your argument.  What you seem to specifically
> want that dismisses raw disk might well be better served with rsync instead
> of Amanda.  I might want Amanda, though, for huge volume and speed.

Now it starts to become interesting :-)

This is actually what I've been in mind to post since a long time...
First, let's say I use Amanda and vtapes to backup my home systems.

I like Amanda, because it's simple to set up, robust, ease of recovery, ...
However, storing backups offsite over the Internet (say, on a remote disk at a
friend's place) is not an option, due to the monthly upload quota enforced by
all ISPs here (in Belgium).

I like rsync, since it only transfers what needs to be transfered. But it
doesn't keep multiple days of backups and hard links can be tricky.

I tried rdiff-backup, which keeps reverse-incrementals, but it can take lots of
memory on the client side (i.e. not suitable to backup old machines) and
doesn't work well with hard links.

I also use duplicity, which keeps reverse-incrementals and supports encryption
and authentication (nice for offsite backups of my digital pictures on a big
scratch disk at work :-), but it can take lots of space on $TMPDIR on the
client side, and it doesn't support hard links.

So my ideal backup solution would be Amanda, with support for incrementally
storing backups at a remote location :-)

In theory, it should be possible to write a tool to take the tar archives as
created by Amanda and calculate differentials, and reassemble the tar archives
at the other end of the network pipe, right? Or are there better solutions?

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

                                                Geert

--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert AT linux-m68k 
DOT org

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
                                                            -- Linus Torvalds