On Tue, Apr 09, 2002 at 04:07:49AM +0000, Mike Rubel wrote: > Hello all, > > I've found a simple, rsync-based trick to emulate the "rotating snapshots" > feature found on some file servers, and hope that members of this group > will find it useful and/or interesting: > > http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/ > > Snapshots are (or rather, appear to be) full backups of a system taken at > regular intervals, available directly to users through a special read-only > system directory. When users accidentally delete or overwrite important > files, or find themselves in need of an old version, they can copy from > the snapshots without any sysadmin help. > > Since I first saw the labor savings that automatic, rotating snapshots > provide (relative to restore from incremental tape backups), I've been > searching for a way to mimic them on my home Linux machine. Rsync gave me > a way to deal with the difficult part--making what are really incremental > backups appear to be full ones. > > Thanks in advance for any feedback or suggestions-- > Mike > > >
You headed in a similar direction to me. In addition to the comments regarding NFS etc. You will find that with cp -l permissions and ownership will not be accurately preserved in older snapshots if someone chmod or chowns files on the original. I have a complete system for automated rotating backups that i was planning on announcing shortly (GPL). I have been using it for about a month so far and am quite pleased. It is a little more complex than your approach and provides more flexible rotation schedules with automatic image (snapshot) expiration. If anyone wishes to look at it or be an alpha test site a periodically updated snapshot of the development area can be found at http://www.pegasys.ws/dirvish. It requires the --link-dest patch i submitted recently to rsync in order to create the cross linking like cp -al while preserving permissions. A copy of the patch is at the URL. I intend to make a more formal announcement when i feel it ready for beta testing. -- ________________________________________________________________ J.W. Schultz Pegasystems Technologies email address: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Remember Cernan and Schmitt -- To unsubscribe or change options: http://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/rsync Before posting, read: http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
