On Wednesday 28 April 2010, Maxim Shkurygin wrote: ... > I used to have a similar system, but then I was "enlightened" by > the wonders of git and now I tend use it for just about everything > i don't want to lose ;) There are probably easier ways to do this, > but I think version control works just fine for backups. So now my > machines use shell scripts and git to push backups to their > representative branches of my central repository. Since I have a > lot virtual os images git helps to consolidate large amounts of > space due to the way git only cares about hashes of data and not > the contents. Another perk is that it is really easy to merge > config files between several machines since that is what it was > made for.
Unfortunately there are some downsides to using Git for backups -- the main one I've personally run into is speed of retrieval. A friend was using Git for storing recordings of the Free Software Round Table shows (it's a radio show that happens at SUNY Stony Brook that I'm involved in, which is recorded on 3rd and 5th Saturdays) and he wanted to give me a copy of the shows, as he had some of the shows that we were missing from the web archive. We were able to make a connection to his server via Git over SSH (over a connection at > T1 speed), made a request for a 'git clone', and then I watched in horror for the next 1 hour 45 minutes (or so) as Git spun its wheels but didn't even _start_ downloading any of the files. Keep in mind this was a single repository of about 40 MP3 files in one directory that this happened on -- not many files and directories. As much as I love Git, the conclusion I came to after the above experience was that backup or distribution of binary files just aren't what Git was meant for. When it comes to backups, I'd personally choose rsync over git. -- Chris -- Chris Knadle [email protected] _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium May 5 - Crack and LLVM Jun 2 - Android Jul 7 - Patent Absurdity - The Movie
