[ale] Versioning backup solution

[Greg Freemyer]

Jim,

You may also want to look at rdiff-backup.

It is a very nice backup tool.  It uses librsync to reduce the amount
of traffic sent from your production machine to the backup machine.

It uses ssh to secure the connection.

On the backup server it keeps a full size copy of your backed up
files, so worst case you can restore them by hand.

It also keeps a series of (compressed) diff files that allow it to
recreate earlier versions of the file.

Greg

On 8/1/05, Jim Popovitch <jimpop at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Stephen,
> 
> Thank you for this info, I have successfully been able to make good use
> of it.  Thanks!
> 
> -Jim P.
> 
> On Thu, 2005-07-28 at 00:58 -0400, Stephen Cristol wrote:
> > On Jul 28, 2005, at 12:16 AM, Jim Popovitch wrote:
> > > I presently use rsync over ssh to remotely backup a few systems.   I am
> > > looking to switch to a secure remote versioning backup system, the
> > > perfect one would be a combination of cvs and rsync.  Any ideas or
> > > suggestions?
> >
> > I currently use rsync to remotely backup some userspace data. I've been
> > experimenting with using additional rsync features (requiring rsync
> > 2.6.1 or later) to preserve previous backups. In a nut shell, after
> > doing a first backup, that is named with a timestamp. I then create a
> > symbolic link named ".previous" to the that data set. Subsequent
> > backups with rsync have the following additional options:
> >
> >      --delete --link-dest=$path/.previous
> >
> > where $path is the directory where this set of backups are stored. If
> > the backup is successful, ".previous" is repointed, logs are updated,
> > etc.
> >
> > These options cause rsync to create a new backup that is an increment
> > relative to ".previous". Files in the previous backup that have not
> > changed are created in the new backup as links (real links, not
> > symbolic links) to the files in the previous backup (--link-dest).
> > Files that no longer exist in the source are not copied or linked in
> > the new backup (--delete).
> >
> > The end result is a collection of directories in $path named with
> > timestamps indicating when that backup occurred. I've got a script that
> > mostly does this, but it still has some rough edges.
> >
> > Upsides to this approach:
> >
> > - all the security of rsync
> > - the efficiency of rsync in determining what to transfer
> > - efficient storage of native file formats
> >
> > Downsides to this approach:
> >
> > - this can create an enormous number of links and I know of no tools to
> > manage them easily (e.g., if you want to prune the data set)
> > - managing disk space becomes more challenging ("du" still gives
> > correct answers; if you ask the right questions, they can be useful
> > answers, too)
> >
> > S
> >
> 
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-- 
Greg Freemyer
The Norcross Group
Forensics for the 21st Century