Timothy J Massey wrote at about 11:55:15 -0400 on Wednesday, March 30, 2011: > Bowie Bailey <bowie_bai...@buc.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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Create and publish websites with WebMatrix Use the most popular FREE web apps or write code yourself; WebMatrix provides all the features you need to develop and publish your website. http://p.sf.net/sfu/ms-webmatrix-sf _______________________________________________ BackupPC-users mailing list BackupPC-users@lists.sourceforge.net List: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users Wiki: http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net Project: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/