Re: [BackupPC-users] Trying to get started with backuppc

On Mon, Sep 6, 2010 at 1:38 AM, Dennis Blewett <dennis.blewett AT gmail DOT 
com> wrote:
> Hello, all.
>
> I tried reading through the BackupPC manual, but I found it very cryptic. I
> can't tell if I should be using rsync or rsyncd.
> Furthermore, I can't determine if I should be using rsync in one scenario
> and rsyncd in another.
>
> I have a computer with three hard drives. I'm basically attempting a
> son-father-grandfather backup system.
>
> Drive 1 = drive with Windows XP, Fedora, and Ubuntu
> Drive 2 = 500 GB drive (for archival purposes)
> Drive 3 = 1 TB drive (for archival purposes)
>
> In general, I want to do the following with this computer:
>
> 1. Backup materials on drive 1 to drive 2 and drive 3
> 2. Allow incremental backups of materials on drive 1 to be made to drive 2
> and drive 3
>
> I believe in this scenario, I want something, such as rsync, to do the work,
> because rsync will only backup files that have changed or are new.
>
> I have another computer (a laptop) with two OSs, bunches of partitions,
> etc...
> I want to be able to network the laptop to my computer (that of which I'm
> currently typing up this email) and have that information stored on drive 3.
> I'd like for it to be a incremental backup system, so I suspect it would be
> using rsync.
>
> As a side note, I won't mind if everything is only backed up to drive 3 if
> BackupPC is limited to backing up to only one drive.
>
> Again, I've read the manual. I don't understand it. I understand that
> BackupPC is a powerful backup tool.
> It seems to be better than the Simple Backup program I'm using in Ubuntu.
>
> What kinds of options, configurations, and actions must I make to get this
> kind of backup setup going?

Well I don't think BackupPC will do what you want directly, but there
are MANY indirect ways of getting there. Since you didn't say I'll
assume you're going to run BackupPC from your Fedora installation
since that's what I'm running, there will probably be some slight
modifications for Ubuntu.

Some options include:
- Setting up your 500GB disk as the backup drive (for Fedora you would
mount it to /var/lib/BackupPC) and rsync'ing your pool to the 1TB
drive for the redundant part.
- Setting up an LVM mirror between the 500GB and 1TB drives which
would take care of the redundancy automatically but you'd be limited
to the size of the smallest disk (500GB).

I'm not enough of an expert to go over each option in detail but there
are plenty of good rsync and LVM how-to's online. I personally like
the second option but if you don't already have a decent understanding
of LVM then it could be a bit daunting.

Richard

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This SF.net Dev2Dev email is sponsored by:

Show off your parallel programming skills.
Enter the Intel(R) Threading Challenge 2010.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-thread-sfd
_______________________________________________
BackupPC-users mailing list
BackupPC-users AT lists.sourceforge DOT net
List:    https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users
Wiki:    http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net
Project: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/