On 3/30/2011 4:11 PM, Jeffrey J. Kosowsky wrote:
> 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

That is basically my first suggestion above.

It all depends on exactly how much tolerance you have for variations in
the schedule.  If you want no variation at all, then you use cron.  If
you can deal with the backup time moving around a bit, then you set your
blackout periods and manually start the first full backup at the time
you want it.

-- 
Bowie

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