Hi,
Philippe Rousselot wrote on 2011-06-01 19:47:44 +0200 [[BackupPC-users] moving
temporarily PC and pool to an external drive]:
> [...]
> My hard drives are full and need to add one to have a new and bigger
> /var partition.
>
> In the mean time I would like to continue backing up things using an
> external drive
you could simply vgextend your VG onto the external drive. Once you get your
new internal drive, you can pvmove the data from the external drive to the
internal one(s). If "external" means "USB", you'll probably want to be
careful, though, because that isn't exactly famous for its stability. But
that warning applies *in any case*.
Ah, you're not using LVM. Bad luck. When you get your new disk, you should
consider changing that. In fact, if your external disk is large enough (larger
than your current pool partition), and you have a bit of time, you could even
consider doing that now. Then again, if your external disk really was large
enough, you would probably just 'dd' and resize and not try anything
complicated.
Before we go on, how much time are we talking about? When I think of "getting
a new disk", I think of a few hours - 3 days at most, if there's a weekend in
the way. Is setting up an interim solution really worth the trouble?
> things are actually archived using standard path /var/lib/backuppc/pc/
> and /var/lib/backuppc/pool to the external drive
I don't understand what you mean by that.
> [...]
> I want to replace /var/lib/backuppc/pc/localhost and
> /var/lib/backuppc/pool by /media/USBDISK/pool and
> /media/USBDISK/pc/localhost
Nope. You want to mount your USBDISK on /var/lib/backuppc ... presuming you
trust usb-storage enough to proceed. Well, you probably don't have much to
lose.
The problem is really that you'll start from scratch. No reference backups
(the next backup will be a full for all hosts, transferring all data without
any rsync savings), no history, no good way to combine that with your present
backup history onto the new disk, no pool files (meaning everything will need
to be compressed and written to disk, rather than comparing with present files
read from disk).
You *could* try copying part of your present pool FS onto the external disk,
but that really depends on a lot of things (size, xferMethods, reference
backup (is the last backup a full?), ...). You most likely won't get anything
that will do more than back up files for a few days and be slightly
inconsistent (pooling probably won't work correctly, but restores should be
fine), but you'll need to do something like this if you have large backup sets
and slow links involved.
In any case, consider that as a temporary safeguard against data loss only,
not as something you'll keep when you move to your new disk.
Due to the way BackupPC (pooling, in particular) works, you *can't* move just
one part of the pool FS to another file system. If you try just symlinking
pc/localhost and pool/ to the external disk, you'll only end up messing up
pooling for the other hosts you are backing up.
If you need more help, you'll need to explain in much more detail what you
want to achieve (rather than what steps you are considering), but don't
hesitate to ask.
Hope that helps.
Regards,
Holger
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Simplify data backup and recovery for your virtual environment with vRanger.
Installation's a snap, and flexible recovery options mean your data is safe,
secure and there when you need it. Data protection magic?
Nope - It's vRanger. Get your free trial download today.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/quest-sfdev2dev
_______________________________________________
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/
|
