On 08/19/2010 08:57 AM, Neil Benn wrote:
Hello,
I'm trying to use rdiff backup to backup from my work server to
a hard drive on my home network (needed for audit purposes - I know it
sounds crazy but there you go!). The network is very slow however it
seems that rdiff backup starts working and then eventually grinds to a
halt about halfway through never making it to the end - I'm backing up
about 40Gb. Obviously once the in ital backup is done the amount of
transferred data will be smaller but rdiff-backup never manages to get
through to the end it always jams somewhere. Is there a way to
determine if rdiff backup is still transferring the data but very very
slowly so I can work out if rdiff-backup has frozen or if it is just on
a go slow?
You can use -v6 or higher to get a good picture of what's happening. If
several large files are involved then you could use wireshark to see if
there is much activity.
rdiff-backup isn't very good over unreliable links since it doesn't
resume partial transfers. I have solved this in two different ways in
the past:
1. Using openvpn. If you turn on the --ping-restart option then it will
detect a down link and restart it. This should be transparent to the
ssh session. You can also try messing with ssh options like BatchMode.
2. First rsync the data and then run rdiff-backup. The sequence of
commands that I run on the destination server is something like this:
#!/bin/bash
set -e
cp -rpl $dest $temp
rm -r $temp/rdiff-backup-data
while ! rsync -vaz --partial $host:$source/ $temp/
do
echo rsync failed, trying again
sleep 10
done
rdiff-backup --no-hard-links $temp $dest
Since this uses hard links it should not consume too much space during
the rsync process. You also might be able to use rsync's link-dest
option instead of the cp and rm commands.
I have successfully been using this method to back up hundreds of gigs
of data over long periods of time.
Steven
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