Re: [OT] Backup solutions

2003-03-21 Thread stavel
Hi Bob,
 Bob == Bob Paige [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Bob Opinions?

I tried rdiff-backup.
I uses rsync-like transfer method to minimize net load and diff-like store method to 
save
incrementals. Diff method is extended even for binary file (that is rdiff algorithm).

The program creates file tree with one special directory. There are stored
reverse increments in the directory.

The advantage is that the tree contents of the newest file, older ones are
stored in reverse increments.

So I have server with partition /var/backup.
Mostly it is mounted as read-only.

Rdiff-backup can backup remote server by ssh:
rdiff-backup remote-pc::/etc  /var/backup/network/remote-pc/etc
... it uses ssh when possible

If you want to clean older increments you can do:
rdiff-backup --remove-older-than 60D  /var/backup/network/remote-pc
The only reason to clear increments could be disk capacity :-)

 
NOTE:
If you can backup remote servers you have to use the same version of
the program.

There were choke  some incompatibilities up in version 0.10


 Enjoy doing backups  :-)
-- 
  Jan Stavl 


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Re: [OT] Backup solutions - rdiff

2003-03-21 Thread Alvin Oga

hi ya savel

On 21 Mar 2003 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Hi Bob,
  Bob == Bob Paige [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 
 Bob Opinions?
 
 I tried rdiff-backup.
 I uses rsync-like transfer method to minimize net load and diff-like store method to 
 save
 incrementals. Diff method is extended even for binary file (that is rdiff algorithm).


yes.. rdiff sounds like a good thing to do..
- make a 1 line change and only save that one line diff changes

- but if one creates a 10MB.file  and 100MB.file  and 1GB.file...
- thhose 10MB files have to be saved daily ... 
( guess no different thant he current daily incrementals

- problem is we cannot reset the special directory  to now also
include the new 10MB.file ... and want to only save the new
changes of the 10MB.file

- if we do recreate a new special directory, than the previous
set of diff changes are lost ?? since those diffs was applied to
a different master special directory ??

and yes.. a good way to do backups across the net ... little/minimal data
traffic

sounds like a fun problem to solve ??

c ya
alvin



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Re: [OT] Backup solutions - rdiff

2003-03-21 Thread stavel
Hi Alvin,
 Alvin == Alvin Oga [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Alvin yes.. rdiff sounds like a good thing to do..  - make a 1
Alvin line change and only save that one line diff changes

Alvin - but if one creates a 10MB.file and 100MB.file and
Alvin 1GB.file...  - thhose 10MB files have to be saved daily ...
Alvin ( guess no different thant he current daily incrementals

:-)

Even you would use amanda you don't save disk space :-)

rdiff-backup technology saves disk space and net load but not
cpu on servers  (python) :-)

Alvin  - problem is we cannot reset the special directory
Alvin to now also include the new 10MB.file ... and want to only
Alvin save the new changes of the 10MB.file

I didn't understand it. Each new 10MB file is a change. And it is
authomaticaly stored in 'special directory' when do new backup.

Alvin  - if we do recreate a new special directory, than
Alvin the previous set of diff changes are lost ?? since those
Alvin diffs was applied to a different master special directory
Alvin ??

What is recreate a new 'special directory'?

If you delete this spec dir, you can't  recreate  backup.
This is dangerous to delete enything in stored tree since
reverse increments upon on it :-(

Because of that I have partition, the backups are stored in,
read-only.

Alvin sounds like a fun problem to solve ??

:-)
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Re: [OT] Backup solutions

2003-03-21 Thread Jamie Lawrence
On Fri, 21 Mar 2003, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Hi Bob,
  Bob == Bob Paige [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 
 Bob Opinions?
 
 I tried rdiff-backup.
 I uses rsync-like transfer method to minimize net load and diff-like store method to 
 save
 incrementals. Diff method is extended even for binary file (that is rdiff algorithm).
 

Just a random from-the-field report...

I tried using rdiff-backup.

It consistently choked after having several incremental backups.

I don't know what the problem was - I'm not a python fan, and have a
bad feeling about backup software that chokes, so I didn't persue it. 

If you use it, I recommend keeping a close eye on it.

-j



-- 
Jamie Lawrence[EMAIL PROTECTED]
The greatest thing about hope is that it makes absolutely no
difference.



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Re: [OT] Backup solutions - my preferences

2003-03-21 Thread Dave Sherohman
On Thu, Mar 20, 2003 at 03:33:12PM -0800, Alvin Oga wrote:
 fun stuff... :-)

Oh, yeah!

 On Thu, 20 Mar 2003, Dave Sherohman wrote:
  Haven't used amanda, have you?  Just set yourself up with a
  decent-sized holding disk and it's not a problem.  (Your backups will
 
 yes...  if one has the holding disk space.. you have backups
 already ... no tape needed ??

Well, yeah, kinda...  It is just a holding area, after all.  Your
backups are not intended to remain there any longer than it takes to
transfer them to tape.

   - at the time i played w/ amanda...  amanda required this
   holding area and the comp didnt have $$$ for mroe disks

But it sounds like you're buying the disk now anyhow, so...

  holding disk.  Just be sure the holding disk is a separate physical
  device to minimize the chance of losing it if the system's primary
  drive fails.
 
 backups should always be done on a different server 
 and preferably on a different 110v circuit

Agreed, if you intend to use the holding disk as a primary repository
for your backups.  Its intended purpose is to allow backups to be run
faster than the actual backup device is capable of writing data to
tape, but it also works well as failover in case of problems with the
tape drive, tapes not getting changed, etc.  Within the bounds of the
intended purpose, putting it in a different server is likely to be
counterproductive since access speed would be reduced.

  I presume that's a home system, right?  I can't think of any sort of
  professional setup where you would have that much data to back up and
  not have the money for a tape changer.

 i do not do backup stuff for workstations/homes... need real $$$
 for real backups  ... for supposedly real work done  :-)

Yup.  Basically my point:  If you have a TB of real data to back up,
I can't imagine that it wouldn't be worth enough to warrant either
buying a robot or hiring a monkey to swap tapes as needed.

 - i want the backup to be live within a few minutes
 of the main server going down for whatever reason
  
  Sounds like you want a redundant server more than a backup solution.

 no ... if they want it live... its just change the ip# form backup
 to real and you're live and online...

If you've got a live backup that can be brought online with just an
IP address change, I'd call that a redundant server...

 which implies they must have
 the $$$ and disk space for these backups or cluster or ?? really
 do lose few grand of real $$$ if the server goes down for 5 minutes
   - so they better plan everything for all contingencies

Quite true.

 - i assume yesterdays or last weeks tape/disk/backups is BAD
 and can still receover everything from day before or tonights
 backup ...
  
  BAD in what way?  Obsolete?  That's why you do nightly
  incrementals.  Or do you expect the media to decay within 48 hours?
 
 backups go back for dumb reasons

The reasons you give would all spoil a backup from 5 minutes ago just
as readily as one from yesterday or last week.  What I was wondering
about was why you assume 'yesterdays or last weeks' tape/disk/
backups is BAD.

   - gotta keep people out of the loop to avoid backup problems

Yup.

 - i can lose 2 FULL backups and still recover everything
  
  Cool.  So can I - I run a one-week backup cycle and keep three weeks'
  worth of tapes.
 
 for 7 days  you will not have proper backup if the last
 full backup is faulty  ??

In theory, yeah, that's possible.  In practice, going back to a two-
or three-week old full and then applying all the daily incrementals
will be equivalent (aside from taking more time to perform) in almost
all cases.  Also keep in mind that amanda spreads fulls out over the
dump cycle rather than doing them all at once, so a single tape
failure can't take out all of my most recent fulls.  (The down side,
of course, is that it will take out at least one of them.)

-- 
The freedoms that we enjoy presently are the most important victories of the
White Hats over the past several millennia, and it is vitally important that
we don't give them up now, only because we are frightened.
  - Eolake Stobblehouse (http://stobblehouse.com/text/battle.html)


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Re: [OT] Backup solutions - watching

2003-03-21 Thread Alvin Oga


On Fri, 21 Mar 2003, Jamie Lawrence wrote:

 If you use it, I recommend keeping a close eye on it.

if you use any backup system ...
- restore that backup data to a new disk regularly
and see that all the files are there..

ls -laR /Original  /tmp/x.x
ls -laR /Restored-from-Backup  /tmp/y.y

and start comparing/diff'ing for missing files
( and yeah..dont use the options shown above.. :-)

might wanna use awk too check for certain things only
(filenames, links) and ignore time for example..

c ya
alvin


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Re: [OT] Backup solutions - watching

2003-03-21 Thread Jamie Lawrence
On Fri, 21 Mar 2003, Alvin Oga wrote:

 
 
 On Fri, 21 Mar 2003, Jamie Lawrence wrote:
 
  If you use it, I recommend keeping a close eye on it.
 
 if you use any backup system ...
   - restore that backup data to a new disk regularly
   and see that all the files are there..
[...]

Yes, certainly, if you rely on your backup, both test and verify.

What I was getting at specifically was that after experimenting with
rdiff-backup, I found it problematic.

It very well could be that I did something stupid, or that the software
sucks, or that my computer is punishing me for being a US aggressor. I
dunno. 

I was merely interested in provoking due diligence for those who choose
to employ that particular software. 

-j, who makes an effort to speak in more than ellipses.


-- 
Jamie Lawrence[EMAIL PROTECTED]
... in making the freedom-for-safety swap, we haven't just dishonored
the dead of 9/11.  We've helped something else die too.
   - Nick Gillespie



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Re: [OT] Backup solutions

2003-03-20 Thread Thomas Krennwallner
Hi!

On Thu Mar 20, 2003 at 10:59:40AM -0500, the boisterous
Bob Paige [EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote to me:
 1) what is better for backup, tape, or CD? (I already have a CD burner)

IMHO tape, but it depends on cost, ...

 2) if tape, what is a good/inexpensive product to use?

If have an inexpensive Seagate STD224000N aka Archive Python. Runs very
good.

 I did some googling and found Linux-Backup.net (and others). It appears 
 the state of backup for Linux is to use tar or afio and backup entire 
 images. I haven't found examples of backing up multi-GB archives that 
 span multiple tapes/CDRs.

 I'm imagining a baseline backup with periodic (maybe weekly, maybe more 
 often) incrementals. I can easily copy my relevant files (3GB+) to a 
 bunch of CDs, but then how do I keep track of newer backup copies that 
 should replace older versions? I am looking for software smart enough to 
 do this.

Try amanda, very good network backup solution (http://www.amanda.org/).
Of course, debian has packaged it.

so long
Thomas

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Re: [OT] Backup solutions

2003-03-20 Thread Gary Hennigan
Bob Paige [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 I've been running my debian system without a backup for about a year
 now. I understand the need for backup (hence this message) so please,
 no assaults for not using one.

 Questions:
 1) what is better for backup, tape, or CD? (I already have a CD burner)
 2) if tape, what is a good/inexpensive product to use?
 3) what software works best?

 I did some googling and found Linux-Backup.net (and others). It
 appears the state of backup for Linux is to use tar or afio and backup
 entire images. I haven't found examples of backing up multi-GB
 archives that span multiple tapes/CDRs.

 I'm imagining a baseline backup with periodic (maybe weekly, maybe
 more often) incrementals. I can easily copy my relevant files (3GB+)
 to a bunch of CDs, but then how do I keep track of newer backup copies
 that should replace older versions? I am looking for software smart
 enough to do this.

 Opinions?

First opinion, don't start a new thread by replying to an already
existing thread. In this case you replied on the debian 2.0: some
intruder broke in thread and changed the Subject. Just about any
reasonable mail client (MUA) is threaded these days and I saw your
topic only by chance because I was reading the original thread. If I,
or anyone using a threaded mail client, had been ignoring the original
thread your topic wouldn't have appeared. This is independent of the
Subject, mostly, and uses the References header, which you didn't
modify. Back to the question...

Tape is the best method, IMO, but you have to have some spare money
laying around if you don't already have a tape drive. If you do decide
to get a tape drive check out eBay for pretty reasonable 4mm drives,
and probably other formats. Of course a lot of them are SCSI so if you
don't already have a SCSI adapter that's another consideration. DDS2
tapes are pretty cheap.

Given that, I like afbackup. Like amanda it can do network backups,
and as far as I can tell everything else Amanda can do. When I first
looked at Amanda it had some, to me, weird limitation. Something like
having to fit all of the data for a run onto one tape? That's fine if
you've got a big tape drive, but my little DDS2 4mm drive won't fit a
full backup of my primary system onto one tape. afbackup has no such
limitation.

The one drawback of afbackup, and it's getting better all the time, is
documentation. When I first started using it it was horrid. I don't
think the author was a native english speaker, or was just a bad
writer, and it showed. However it's gotten better with each release
and is now not too bad. I'm not complaining, because I didn't do
anything to help make it better. The software, in contrast, works
fantastically. Never a problem, and I have had to do plenty of
recoveries.

Gary


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Re: [OT] Backup solutions

2003-03-20 Thread nate
Bob Paige said:

 Opinions?

see this:
http://ask.slashdot.org/askslashdot/03/03/18/0252218.shtml?tid=106

for my own use, at the moment I use an Exabyte Mammoth tape drive
for my backups. 20/40GB tapes. I got the tape drive for $100 from my
previous employer(at the time ebay had em for $400-500). Nearly brand
new, beautiful drive.

before that I did manual backups with CDRs. Usually tar/bzip stuff and
throw it on a CD.

I use BRU(not professional, the old one) for my tape backups.

nate




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Re: [OT] Backup solutions

2003-03-20 Thread Glenn English
On Thu, 2003-03-20 at 08:59, Bob Paige wrote:

 Questions:
 1) what is better for backup, tape, or CD? (I already have a CD burner)
 2) if tape, what is a good/inexpensive product to use?
 3) what software works best?

IMHO, 
1) tape - can easily back up the entire system (and a small network)
2) DDS - others are faster, but they cost more
3) amanda, amanda, and amanda - command line, cron-able, free, and very
reliable 

It might also be a good idea to take snapshots of especially interesting
stuff every once in a while with your CD burner.

-- 
Glenn English
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: [OT] Backup solutions - my preferences

2003-03-20 Thread Alvin Oga


On 20 Mar 2003, Glenn English wrote:

 On Thu, 2003-03-20 at 08:59, Bob Paige wrote:
 
  Questions:
  1) what is better for backup, tape, or CD? (I already have a CD burner)
  2) if tape, what is a good/inexpensive product to use?
  3) what software works best?
 
 IMHO, 
 1) tape - can easily back up the entire system (and a small network)
 2) DDS - others are faster, but they cost more
 3) amanda, amanda, and amanda - command line, cron-able, free, and very
 reliable 

i dont have time to play with tapes.. daily changing it..
- forget one day... and you're hosed

if you're using tapes for weekly offline backups.. no problem

find /etc /home /... -mtime -90 -type f | tar zcvf /dev/tape -T -
( 90 days worth of changes )

i prefer 100GB - 1TB of disks to be backed up to other disks ...
( tapes are too small for full backups and definitely too slow )

- i do daily, weekly, monthly incrementals

- i want the backup to be live within a few minutes
of the main server going down for whatever reason

- i assume yesterdays or last weeks tape/disk/backups is BAD
and can still receover everything from day before or tonights
backup ...

- i want a hands off backup... if i go away for vacation
for a week/month... the systems are still properly backed up 
( semi-guaranteed )

- i can lose 2 FULL backups and still recover everything

backup example scripts  and why backups fail too
http://www.linux-backup.net/app.gwif.html

c ya
alvin


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Re: [OT] Backup solutions - my preferences

2003-03-20 Thread Dave Sherohman
On Thu, Mar 20, 2003 at 01:04:08PM -0800, Alvin Oga wrote:
 On 20 Mar 2003, Glenn English wrote:
  1) tape - can easily back up the entire system (and a small network)
  2) DDS - others are faster, but they cost more
  3) amanda, amanda, and amanda - command line, cron-able, free, and very
  reliable 

Agreed!

 i dont have time to play with tapes.. daily changing it..
   - forget one day... and you're hosed

Haven't used amanda, have you?  Just set yourself up with a
decent-sized holding disk and it's not a problem.  (Your backups will
finish fast, too.)  My amanda server at work can easily run a week's
worth of backups without needing a tape, just saving it all up on the
holding disk.  Just be sure the holding disk is a separate physical
device to minimize the chance of losing it if the system's primary
drive fails.

Or, of course, if you have the money to spare, you can buy a changer
and let the robot play with tapes for you.

 i prefer 100GB - 1TB of disks to be backed up to other disks ...
   ( tapes are too small for full backups and definitely too slow )

I presume that's a home system, right?  I can't think of any sort of
professional setup where you would have that much data to back up and
not have the money for a tape changer.

By way of comparison, I work at a manufacturing plant.  Home
directories for ~80 users, plus the company databases total out to a
little under 30G.  Using amanda, I'm getting full dumps of everything
at least once a week, with nightly incrementals of anything that's
not doing a full.  Totals out to about 7G a night going onto tape,
taking 13 minutes to collect all the data onto the holding disk and a
three and a half to four hours to write it to tape.

On the 20G tapes I currently use, I could handle pretty close to 100G
without any additional hardware or changes to my backup
configuration, although my 30G holding disk would only handle one or
two days' backups without a tape change, rather than a week.  Dumps
to holding disk would still take well under an hour and writing the
tape would be under half a day.  So what's too small and
definitely too slow there?

   - i want the backup to be live within a few minutes
   of the main server going down for whatever reason

Sounds like you want a redundant server more than a backup solution.
Even if no human intervention is required, you're going to need more
than a few minutes to copy 100GB-1TB from one hard drive to
another.

   - i assume yesterdays or last weeks tape/disk/backups is BAD
   and can still receover everything from day before or tonights
   backup ...

BAD in what way?  Obsolete?  That's why you do nightly
incrementals.  Or do you expect the media to decay within 48 hours?

   - i want a hands off backup... if i go away for vacation
   for a week/month... the systems are still properly backed up 
   ( semi-guaranteed )

That's exactly what you get from amanda with a suitably large holding
disk or (preferably) a changer.

   - i can lose 2 FULL backups and still recover everything

Cool.  So can I - I run a one-week backup cycle and keep three weeks'
worth of tapes.


Now, I'm not saying that you shouldn't use disks if that's what makes
you happy.  I don't care how (or even if) you back it up.  But your
criticisms of tape are, by and large, incorrect and/or misleading.
I only mean to correct them.

-- 
The freedoms that we enjoy presently are the most important victories of the
White Hats over the past several millennia, and it is vitally important that
we don't give them up now, only because we are frightened.
  - Eolake Stobblehouse (http://stobblehouse.com/text/battle.html)


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Re: [OT] Backup solutions - my preferences

2003-03-20 Thread Glenn English
On Thu, 2003-03-20 at 14:54, Dave Sherohman wrote:
 On Thu, Mar 20, 2003 at 01:04:08PM -0800, Alvin Oga wrote:

  i dont have time to play with tapes.. daily changing it..
  - forget one day... and you're hosed
 
 Haven't used amanda, have you?  Just set yourself up with a
 decent-sized holding disk and it's not a problem.  (Your backups will
 finish fast, too.)  My amanda server at work can easily run a week's
 worth of backups without needing a tape, just saving it all up on the
 holding disk.  Just be sure the holding disk is a separate physical
 device to minimize the chance of losing it if the system's primary
 drive fails.

That's the way I use it - flush the backups to tape every Saturday
morning. Downside is that you can lose a week's data is/when the holding
disk dies.

  i prefer 100GB - 1TB of disks to be backed up to other disks ...
  ( tapes are too small for full backups and definitely too slow )
  
  - i want the backup to be live within a few minutes
  of the main server going down for whatever reason
 

Yup. Different philosophy. If you want fast, random access to the backed
up data, tape is definitely not the medium of choice. If you want to use
the backup only for restores, disks are way too expensive.

One of the major benefits of amanda is that backed up data are stored in
a well known format (GNU tar or cpio - your choice). So in case of
major disaster, you don't even need the amanda software for a bare metal
recovery; a floppy with a tape driver and tar/cpio is enough. So I'm
told - haven't been there (yet).

Another cool solution, in some situations, is rsync. I've set up rsync
to use an ssh connection to sync files over the Internet. The first
time, rsync will copy the entire file. After that it copies only the
differences - takes only a few seconds to maintain an offsite copy of
the company books, a 4.5MB file.

http://www.rsync.org/
http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/tech_report/node2.html

 I don't care how (or even if) you back it up.

If it's a playpen computer, don't worry about it. 

If it's for real, I do care. Is the only copy of 10 years of your bank
account(s) on your disk? Is the computer a server with lots of
fine-tuned config files? *Please* back up, and do a good job of it. My
heart sinks when I have to tell somebody they've just lost vast
quantities of data, and there's nothing to be done about it except maybe
to go through years of bank statements and re-enter it all by hand.

-- 
Glenn English
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: [OT] Backup solutions - my preferences

2003-03-20 Thread Alvin Oga

fun stuff... :-)

On Thu, 20 Mar 2003, Dave Sherohman wrote:

  i dont have time to play with tapes.. daily changing it..
  - forget one day... and you're hosed
 
 Haven't used amanda, have you?  Just set yourself up with a
 decent-sized holding disk and it's not a problem.  (Your backups will

yes...  if one has the holding disk space.. you have backups
already ... no tape needed ??
- at the time i played w/ amanda...  amanda required this
holding area and the comp didnt have $$$ for mroe disks

 holding disk.  Just be sure the holding disk is a separate physical
 device to minimize the chance of losing it if the system's primary
 drive fails.

backups should always be done on a different server 
and preferably on a different 110v circuit
 
  i prefer 100GB - 1TB of disks to be backed up to other disks ...
  ( tapes are too small for full backups and definitely too slow )
 
 I presume that's a home system, right?  I can't think of any sort of
 professional setup where you would have that much data to back up and
 not have the money for a tape changer.

i backup Terabytes or 10's of Terabytes of data ... when i get called
for backup stuff... 

i do not do backup stuff for workstations/homes... need real $$$
for real backups  ... for supposedly real work done  :-)

 By way of comparison, I work at a manufacturing plant.  Home
 directories for ~80 users, plus the company databases total out to a
 little under 30G.

size of data needed depends on the data those users create ...

 not doing a full.  Totals out to about 7G a night going onto tape,
 taking 13 minutes to collect all the data onto the holding disk and a
 three and a half to four hours to write it to tape.

good ... :-)
 
  - i want the backup to be live within a few minutes
  of the main server going down for whatever reason
 
 Sounds like you want a redundant server more than a backup solution.

i have 3 redundant backups on a typical backup system

 Even if no human intervention is required, you're going to need more
 than a few minutes to copy 100GB-1TB from one hard drive to
 another.

normally... i keep backups in tgz file though... but..

no ... if they want it live... its just change the ip# form backup
to real and you're live and online...  which implies they must have
the $$$ and disk space for these backups or cluster or ?? really
do lose few grand of real $$$ if the server goes down for 5 minutes
- so they better plan everything for all contingencies
 
( and of course joe blow will be on vacation at the time
( the server or disks decides to get sick

  - i assume yesterdays or last weeks tape/disk/backups is BAD
  and can still receover everything from day before or tonights
  backup ...
 
 BAD in what way?  Obsolete?  That's why you do nightly
 incrementals.  Or do you expect the media to decay within 48 hours?

backups go back for dumb reasons
- disk being full is the most common backup problems

- somebody played witht he patch panel
- power loss
- somebody hit reset on one of their pc that nfs mounted
  a server ... and nfs dies or crawls..
- gazillion reasons why backups fail

- gotta keep people out of the loop to avoid backup problems

  - i can lose 2 FULL backups and still recover everything
 
 Cool.  So can I - I run a one-week backup cycle and keep three weeks'
 worth of tapes.

for 7 days  you will not have proper backup if the last
full backup is faulty  ??

i run incremental backup across 30 days in addition to the full backup
that we assume worked ... but if it fails ... the 30 or 90 day
incremental backups will compensate for any failed full backup
- i keep 90 - 180 days of backups depending on data/disks available
( probably an overkill .. 

( but i want a clean backup if a hacker had been sitting in
( the network for 30 dayz before they wake up and start playing

- and yeah.. one has other problems if you didnt notice a 
trojan floating around for 30 days... but it will happen..

c ya
alvin


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Re: [OT] Backup solutions - my preferences

2003-03-20 Thread Bob Paige

Haven't used amanda, have you?  Just set yourself up with a
decent-sized holding disk and it's not a problem.  (Your backups will
finish fast, too.)  My amanda server at work can easily run a week's
worth of backups without needing a tape, just saving it all up on the
holding disk.  Just be sure the holding disk is a separate physical
device to minimize the chance of losing it if the system's primary
drive fails.
I would like to use CDR instead of tape, but I've heard that Amanda 
requires you to use a new tape for each session (good or bad). If I wait 
until the end of the week, assuming I've accumulated only 500-600MB of 
changes, will it back it all up onto the single CDR? What if it 
accumulated more than would fit on a disk, would it span multiple disks?

Also, if you wait until the end of the week, does Amanda keep multiple 
generations of the files modified during that week in the holding disk, 
or only the most recent modification?

--
Bobman
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