I appreciate this email. I really need to backup my data more/better and this gave me a lot to think about.
Sent from BlueMail On Jun 13, 2017, 7:51 PM, at 7:51 PM, Predrag Punosevac <[email protected]> wrote: >Somebody hiding behind a pseudonym G wrote: > >> >> >> Most tutorials suggest not to backup tmp and var etc. I decided to >> backup the whole var. >> > >You were the last person I expected to ask a question on this mailing >list after those "expert advises" you gave people on OpenBSD desktop in >which you insulted 2 dozen port maintainer claiming that their ports >are >not up to date. > > >> What do you suggest? I though rsnapshot was ok? >> > >OK for what? The first question is do you really need a backup and what >are you trying to backup? None of us can help you to answer that >question but we can help you to understand different concepts. > > >In my book there are three different things which people refer to as >backup. > >1. Journaling >2. Genuine Backup >3. Archiving > > >You can think of Journal as a file system level version control system. >HAMMER of DragonFly BSD is the only file system which supports >fine-grained journaling via history command which can be very finly >tuned. ZFS is another file syste/volume manager which supports >journaling via ZFS snapshots. You can read this post of mine > >https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=144340431520709&w=2 > >for a very naive comparison of the two. > >OpenBSD will hopefully one day have HAMMER 2 but in the mean time your >only option is > >sysutils/glastree > >or you can become an expert on mtree I suppose. You could also by a >MAC >when Apple finishes their Apple file system. Journals are useful if >you >are dealing with bunch of users who should be really using a version >control systems for whatever they are editing but they are too lazy or >too dumb to do so. > > >Now comes a genuine backup. A genuine backup is something which you >expect to access on the regular basis with moderate seeking speed. >rsynapshot is an example of a rsync Perl wrapper written for a genuine >backup. Apple time machine is also just a wrapper around rsync. I would >strongly suggest you read the following thread > >https://www.reddit.com/user/rsyncnet/?sort=hot > >In particular pay attention to the post which starts as > >" I have some expertise in this area[1] so I would like to provide some >additional information for future readers of this thread - specifically >on rsync snapshots, rsnapshot, duplicity, attic and borg. > >The simplest thing to do is to rsync from one system to another. Very >simple, but the problem is it's just a "dumb mirror" - there is no >history, no versions in the past (snapshots in time) and every day you >do your rsync, you risk clobbering old data that you won't realize you >need until tomorrow. " > >Very informative. The only thing I could add is that the guy is not >familiar with HAMMER because otherwise he would notice that we went >full >circle. rsync paired with HAMMER is no longer "dumb mirror". If the >target is HAMMER you can do something like > >SHELL=/bin/sh >PATH=/etc:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin ># Order of crontab fields ># minute hour mday month wday command >0 7 * * * /usr/local/bin/rsync -aW >--inplace --delete /home/predrag rsync://[email protected]:873/ftp > >and you will have full history. That is how I backup my desktop to my >DragonFly file server. > >Some other backup tools are dump/restore, Bacula (make sure you backup >the data base because you will not be able to restore), Amanda, HAMMER >mirror stream, ZFS rsnapshot. The last one which I use at work is >particularly robust in data center settings. > >Now that is not the full story of backup. The above is typically >related >to backup of data. Sometimes one wants to backup server configuration >files in order to quickly restore the functionality of the server. >OpenBSD way of backing up server configuration files is altroot > >https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq14.html#altroot > >OpenBSD comes with a wonderful tool called softraid > >http://man.openbsd.org/softraid.4 > >which can be used to fully encrypt your laptop but also for RAID 1 >installation of OpenBSD. Root on RAID 1 gives you a protection but it >is >not a backup. Typically I backup such OpenBSD server to an external USB >device via altroot. People have noticed that sometimes it is useful to >backup /var as well. You can use similar approach with /var which I do. >Don't forget to dump your databases before you do /altvar backup. > > >Finally most home users will really need Archiving. Archiving is >a technique of "permanently" storing data in the case of unlikly loss >of >original data. There are many ways to do it. Backup type is time-tested >way to do it. You can use sysutils/duplicity to archive your encrypted >data to Amazon Glacer. Colin Percival will do that for you using the >crypto function scrypt he decovered and this little tool > >sysutils/tarsnap > >His prices are reasonable. Other formaly inexpensive methoods of >archiving involve burning DVDs and taking them to a remote storage. You >can find the following userful > >sysutils/shunt > >Anyhow, hopefully the above will give you enough to think about without >overburden you with concepts like incremental, differential, and full >backup. > > > >> ps. On linux i was using backintime (which uses rsync) but it seems >its >> no longer on the packages. >> > >Probably because OpenBSD crew has very aggressive approach in removing >obsolite, poorly written, unstable, and poor security track record >software from its ports three. You really think that we are incapable >of >porting tripwire to OpenBSD? Think again! > >Now you can see who actually have obsolite and older version of the >software. It is Linux and I am not talking about Red Hat. I am talking >about Ubuntu. > >Best, >Predrag > > > >> On 06/13/17 19:05, Paolo Aglialoro wrote: >> > +1 >> > >> > Have a full snapshot of your system, otherwise restore will be a >> nightmare. >> > Do it with another tool, rsnapshot is mostly useful for data. >> > >> > Il 13 giu 2017 11:05 AM, "Mark Carroll" <[email protected]> ha scritto: >> > >> >> On 13 Jun 2017, G. wrote: >> >> >> >>> Hello! >> >>> Im trying to take daily and weekly backups of my system >rsnapshot. >> >> (snip) >> >>> Im not sure if there is anything in var that i should consider >> backup >> >>> like sysmerge or syspatch. >> >> (snip) >> >> >> >> I have various stuff across different machines that is worth >backing >> up >> >> in var/ like directories for nsd, unbound, www, etc. It all >depends >> what >> >> you're using your machine for thus what you've put in those. >> >> >> >> Storage these days is cheap: my usual approach is to back up >> everything >> >> except stuff that I have hunted down via "du" and suchlike as >being >> >> actually rather large and decided I can certainly live without. >> Better >> >> to back up a bit too much rather than too little. (Note that >things >> like >> >> logs are rather compressible so even "du" may badly overstate >them.) >> >> >> >> -- Mark >> >> >> >>
