BackupPC-users

Re: [BackupPC-users] Restrict machine to do full backups Friday night and incremental on weekdays?

2011-03-30 16:13:27
Subject: Re: [BackupPC-users] Restrict machine to do full backups Friday night and incremental on weekdays?
From: "Jeffrey J. Kosowsky" <backuppc AT kosowsky DOT org>
To: "General list for user discussion, questions and support" <backuppc-users AT lists.sourceforge DOT net>
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2011 16:11:05 -0400
Timothy J Massey wrote at about 11:55:15 -0400 on Wednesday, March 30, 2011:
 > Bowie Bailey <Bowie_Bailey AT BUC DOT com> wrote on 03/30/2011 10:52:21 AM:
 > 
 > > On 3/30/2011 10:16 AM, Scott wrote:
 > > > Full backups from one machine look like they are going to take > 12
 > > > hours, so a night time full backup is not going to work - for this one
 > > > machine I need it to happen starting Friday night so it has all
 > > > weekend to finish (poor connectivity).    All the other machines can
 > > > stay on the normal default schedule.   Is this possible/how? Thanks!
 > > 
 > > Two possibilities here:
 > > 
 > > 1) Start the backup manually the first Friday night.  After this, the
 > > normal backup scheduling will continue starting the backup at
 > > approximately the same time each week.  If it shifts too much, then run
 > > another manual backup to get it back on schedule.
 > 
 > This actually works reasonably well.  If the impact of running the fulls 
 > on the wrong day occasionally isn't too great and you keep an eye once a 
 > week, this works sufficiently.
 > 
 > Also, don't forget that future fulls are shorter than the first full if 
 > you use rsync/rsyncd.  So if the first one is taking 12 hours, the 
 > subsequent ones will take less.
 > 
 > Finally, is a 12 hour backup really that bad for your environment?  Can it 
 > run from 6 P.M. to 6 A.M., for example?
 > 
 > In any case, if you absolutely have to make sure you run them on a certain 
 > day...
 > 
 > > 2) Disable scheduled backups for this machine and run them from cron
 > > instead.  For example:
 > > 
 > > # Machine1 backups (3:15am) -- Full on Saturday, Inc other days
 > > 15 3 * * 6 /usr/local/BackupPC/bin/BackupPC_serverMesg backup machine1
 > > machine1 backuppc 1
 > > 15 3 * * 0-5 /usr/local/BackupPC/bin/BackupPC_serverMesg backup machine1
 > > machine1 backuppc 0
 > 
 > I do not recommend *disabling* scheduled backups.  But modify it:  set the 
 > full backup age to something like 7.97 days and use the cron entries 
 > described above.  That way, if something goes wrong with the cron jobs, 
 > BackupPC will still initiate a backup.  Yes, it will do this a day late, 
 > but at least you're getting a backup--and maybe the slowdown (or whatever 
 > you're trying to avoid by running it on a certain day) will let you know 
 > that there's a problem!  :)
 > 

Wouldn't a better/more robust solution be to define the blackout
period for that machine to exclude everything except for the weekend
-- or everything but Friday night if you just want a single Friday
night backup.

Just use a host-specific config file

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