On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 10:58 PM, John Goerzen <jgoerzen AT complete DOT org> 
wrote:
> This *is* the smallest possible chunk, sadly ;-)
>
>> You may want to consider a separate backup profile of the database dumps. So
>> set up one backup for the rest of the machine; and another backup (using
>> $Conf{ClientNameAlias} to point to the desired machine) just to back up the
>> database. That way you can use rsync for one and tar for the other.
>
> An excellent idea as well.  I like that and will give it a shot.
>

Or even (forgive me please rabid BackupPC devotees) consider another
tool to handle those special-case files.

rdiff-backup  is designed  for exactly this type of scenario - very
large files that only change a little bit from one run to the next -
not just database dumps but mailstores are another classic example. It
saves a huge amount of storage space compared to programs that store
whole files only; its algorithm does the incremental-version-linking
within the file level, kind of like the rsync algorithm implemented at
the on-disc layer.

It's easier for you to check it out and see for yourself than to
understand the theory - rdiff-backup is available on the
SystemRescueCD disc, it's a simple CLI proggie, can just be run from a
cron script.

This would allow you to either exclude those specific targets from
BackupPC, or include them for redundancy in the full-backup runs but
still have a fine granularity of incrementals in between.

BTW if yours is a large database actively being written to while the
dumps are made, I hope you've accounted for the fact that there may be
inconsistencies due to the time taken to dump the various tables. I'd
advise either taking the database offline for the time it takes to do
the dumps, or if that's too long a window using LVM snapshotting (or
something similar) to reduce the downtime. Same with Exchange, perhaps
less critical with other mailstores.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Special Offer-- Download ArcSight Logger for FREE (a $49 USD value)!
Finally, a world-class log management solution at an even better price-free!
Download using promo code Free_Logger_4_Dev2Dev. Offer expires 
February 28th, so secure your free ArcSight Logger TODAY! 
http://p.sf.net/sfu/arcsight-sfd2d
_______________________________________________
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/