I'm evaluating possible solutions for "Drop in USB backup". as an existing amanda user, I was interested by the possibility of having amanda run a backup of a flash drive whenever it's connected. I've got a few simple requirements for this backup operation. 1) a backup should happen whenever a "Known" usb drive is connected. I have a good idea how to do this with a generic UDEV rule and a script. 2) an option to backup a drive in either "block level" (for encrypted drives/filesystems) or "file level" mode. amanda supports both, though how to enable that option in configuration settings I'm a bit unsure, but it doesn't seem insurmountable. 3) a simple web interface (Again, I can whip something up), and 4) non-interactive operation. with a script, most things can be done non-interactively for backups. 5) Backup mode. when a user goes to a website and picks their drive out of the list and specifies "Backup mode", they should get the version of files the specified back from the drive, optionally backing up first. 6) when a backup or restore is done, users should get a notification in their inbox that it's done. this is again ahndled by a no-longer trivial script called from udev.
5 is where I forsee the most issues. firstly, can a restore be run completely non-interactively like that, on an entire directory tree, recursively? I've never had to do ti yet, so I don't recall. The interface will be a smidge tricky, but doable. Managing the the number of configuration sets needed to maintain this system, even automatedly seems like it might be prone to errors. What does the amanda list think, is this using a sledge hammer to push in a thumbtack, or is amanda well suited to this task, and the issues just need to be more fleshed out? I ahve a few alternatives, including using simple OS tools to backup to a directory that's in turn backed up by amanda with other data, and looking for some pre-existing solution, which I haven't yet found.
