Hi, Kenneth Porter wrote on 2017-05-14 18:37:53 -0700 [Re: [BackupPC-users] Recommend add to manual]: > [...] > What if you have TWO drives you want to mount to /var/lib/backuppc? With > BackupPC 4, it's not unreasonable to swap your backup media every week > to an offsite location. > > Just create the skeleton directory structure in the external media and > run restorecon once it's mounted. > > Another thing one can do is move /etc/BackupPC to the external media and > mount that directory over /etc/BackupPC so that your settings follow > your media.
I'm not sure I like the idea of mounting over parts of /etc, but that might be a matter of taste. Why not symlink /etc/BackupPC to /var/lib/backuppc/etc (or wherever your backup drive is mounted)? That way, a failing mount would lead to an unresolvable symlink rather than an empty directory (or worse, a directory containing something outdated, though, come to think of it, you could populate /etc/BackupPC with something appropriate, assuming there *is* anything appropriate in such a case; I suspect in the absense of your backup drive you'd want BackupPC *not* to start). All of that said, do you *really* want different configurations for your different external media? Isn't the point to have an *identical* configuration and swap around media in order to have an off-site copy? > This makes it easier to do bare-metal restores. Well, yes, but you can just as well rsync /etc/BackupPC to /var/lib/backuppc/etc (or whatever) to keep an up-to-date copy on your external media. For a bare-metal restore, you'll need to setup whatever you need anyway, i.e. bind-mount /etc/BackupPC or create a symlink or copy over the contents or whatever. You might have a script on your backup media which does this for you. You might even have a working BackupPC installation on your backup media. Your script could copy/symlink/bind-mount that into your new system, supposing it can't be run directly from the external disc. Just some ideas that spring to mind ... > Just install > a minimal OS and BackupPC, then mount your backup drive and you've got > all your settings ready to do the restore. Installing BackupPC from a distribution package is probably a better choice, agreed, as you get dependency resolution (a web server, for instance). Call me paranoid, but if I'd go to the trouble of keeping off-site backups, I'd keep a self-contained BackupPC installation on my backup media. I can *still* install BackupPC on the native OS and use that, but I'm less dependent on external resources. And, as I wrote, "mount your backup drive" is really at least two mounts, which doesn't sound that much easier than one mount and one softlink. From my experience, I'd say it's important to *document* what needs to be done, and, personally, I'd document it in the form of a shell script containing the needed commands. Regards, Holger ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ 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/