Les Mikesell wrote:
> The reason for backing things up is that things go wrong.  Things can go 
> wrong that destroy everything in the same location.  If you don't have 
> at least 2, the backup copy is going to be in the same location as the 
> only other copy you have at least part of the time.

I was planning to use a remote server for that (just get a hosting 
account with cheap disk space, or use Amazon S3 or similar).

>> On my system the disk always reliably mounts on /media/Daniel. You just 
>> need to give the partition a label ("Daniel") which I would do anyways, 
>> simply because I like the disk having a memorable name.
> 
> But unless you do a custom install, that's not where backuppc is going 
> to want it.

???  I might have misunderstood something. Don't I just set 
$Conf{topDir} = '/media/Daniel/Backups' ?


>> Anyways, checking that the backup directory exists seems like a no 
>> brainer, even if you don't think specifically of the case of external disks.
> 
> External or not, yanking a disk out from under a running application is 
> a little drastic.

Well, in my mind, I wasn't planning to do it while it's actually backing 
up. If BackupPC makes a backup every hour, I don't mind waiting until 
it's quiet to unplug the disk and take my laptop to the bedroom.


> umount should not be able to complete if any process has open files or 
> its working directory.  You can't do that sort of thing when you run 
> server processes.

So there's no problem. If I try to unmount and BackupPC is doing 
something I just wait until it's finished and then take the laptop to 
the bedroom.


>> It's only a 2-3 line change. It doesn't seem like an unreasonable 
>> addition to BackupPC...
> 
> Maybe not, but it is quite a philosophical change from the environment 
> that typical unix server programs expect.  Most people building a backup 
> server would probably start with a stable box expected to be up for 
> years even if the targets come and go.

Jeffrey just gave another, perhaps more typical example: The backup 
media might be an NFS share. You might want to check if that is mounted 
or not (and possibly try to mount it if it's not).

Daniel.

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