Backup

[adam7979]

yey, smbmount + tar works for me....

[scm]

I'm trying to avoid scripting as a last solution.

Scripting is usually the first solution on Linux! It's quicker and cheaper than trying to find a commercial package that does what you want, and you can tweak it as necessary to suit local requirements. Linux comes with the tools you need to do most things; scripting is just joining them together to achieve the desired result.

For example, to backup a list of specific files, I'd use:

cpio -o >backup <filelist

To backup files from a specific location:

find /backup/from/here -print -depth | cpio -o >backupfile

The find(1) above can be tweaked to only save files modified after a certain date if you want incermental backups.

Both commands can be further enhanced by, for instance, compressing the resultant archive files.

[JoeB]

I've been using a product called Acronis to backup / restore both Windows and Linux partitions / drives. It's not free, but when it comes to restoring data, I don't trust my scripting abilities

[bigtomrodney]

I think Veritas Backup Exec is available....That's preety much the most standard backup tool away from arcserve, and it's full of GUIs and cross platform availability.

Does cost a bomb though.

[speculatrix]

Amanda is very popular. might be overkill.

here's my /usr/local/bin/backup script which I cron to make a daily snapshot:

#!/usr/local/bin/bash

D=`date +%Y%m%d-%H%M`
F=/home/backups/system-backup-$D

cd /
tar cvvf - \
/etc \
/home/padm \
/root/.ssh \
/usr/local/bin \
/usr/local/etc \
/usr/local/jakarta-tomcat* \
/usr/local/www/cgi-bin \
/usr/local/www/data \
2> $F.list \
| bzip2 > $F.tar.bz2


I just then prune old backups

[bigtomrodney]

Which solutions can do differentials? This saves a lot of space, especially when there are requirements to hold data for long periods, or backups need to run quickly.

[speculatrix]

just add "-mtime -7" into the tar command to only back up files changed in the last 7 days.