BackupPC-users

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

2010-09-19 02:01:25
Subject: Re: [BackupPC-users] Trying to get started with backuppc
From: Dennis Blewett <dennis.blewett AT gmail DOT com>
To: "General list for user discussion, questions and support" <backuppc-users AT lists.sourceforge DOT net>
Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 00:58:56 -0500
Yeah, the rsync mirror option sounds pretty good. I think I'll look into that.

At the moment, I'm using my laptop as a mobile workstation. As such, I'm attempting to find a way to hookup the laptop to the server and generate a backup while I'm asleep.

What would be some of the next steps I take?

My guess is that I do the following:

1. setup a passwordless ssh connection
2. configure backuppc
3. have scripts on the laptop to make sure it connects to the server and initiates a backup to the server

I believe I can do step 1, but do any of you suggest any particular way I do it? Should I make a separate user on the laptop and/or server and give it root permissions?

In relation to step 2, should I be using rsync if I am transmitting information from the laptop to the server? Furthermore, I have the server and laptop setup with different users and the permissions and who owns what on the files is varied. If the user ownership varies yet the file is the same, will backuppc attempt to backup the entire file, or will it simply find a way to tag on the ownership differences without backing up the entire file again?

I believe I can conduct step three, but if there are ever issues, I'll simply generate another email to discuss them.

Thanks for the help.

- Dennis F. Blewett

On Mon, Sep 6, 2010 at 11:43 AM, Richard Shaw <hobbes1069 AT gmail DOT com> wrote:
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

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