backup using tape drive

[linux r]

I guess the big questions would involve:

1) how much data we are talking about, and 

2) whether you would rather copy/restore the whole *&() drive each
time, or  if it is a once-a-year sort of thing.  I work with a systems
admin who ghosts everything, all the time, every day.  It is a little
too much of a crutch in his case, but that is differrent.

>>I'm tarring each directory off root (/var, /etc, /home, ...). 

Curious, why are you doing this?  Your data will only likely be in a
few directories (/home and whatever other few directories you put apps
in or whatever).  If you partition well, you can set it up so that you
could, in the event of failure or running out of disk space --
recreate a new partition on the fly with fdisk or something similar.  
A lot of those directories aren't going anywhere, and even if they
did, they would reappear exactly the same.  IOW, you can partition
with the full understanding that if there is ever a problem, you could
do a restore/partial install and fix the thing.  All the while your
*real* data is on another parttion.  Linux's fdisk is smart enough to
give you the option of what to keep and what to blow away at
install/repair time.


>>Luckily, I have not had to restore from a backup yet. I'd like to do
a "bare metal" backup so I can restore everything, including boot
code, in one restore operation. I'm considering
doing it with Norton Ghost, but would dd be able to do it? 

DD will do a bit-by-bit copy of anything anywhere (floppy, hard drive
etc) to anywhere else in a *nix environment.  Keep in mind that while
it is a powerful command, it is still only a command -- not a full
fledged backup utility.  Even small hard drives add up to a lot of
bits, especially when you are copying it in a linear fashion!

Nonetheless you could try

# dd if=/ of=/dev/hdd                       (assuming d is your target
location drive)

I would be curious to know how long it takes to do a decent sized
drive.  With a really big drive it might take awhile however - a
pretty serious drawback if you are going to be doing this really
often.

>>Any other suggestions?

After you have determined the true amount of data that you need to
backup, you might consider burning cd's of certain directories.  
Consider it a 'snapshot' of ongoing data, write a date on the disk and
forget about it.  If you need to do a restore, just throw in the cd
and mount it and copy whatever you need.  This way you seperate your
operating system files from your data.

If you really need an app, you might check freshmeat and other linux
sites to see if there is an open source app that will do it.  Not sure
how samba figures in, whether that will be a problem or not but my
hunch is that it probably isn't a problem (although it probably IS, if
you go buy a windows backup app).  I have heard of  'amanda', but I
haven't used it to know if it's any good.  I understand that it will
do regularly scheduled backups and restores etc.  Maybe someone else
can jump in at this point....

Thanks for reading
Hope that helps 









On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 08:38:18 -0700 (PDT), Harold Hallikainen
<harold at hallikainen.com> wrote:
> Topic drift here... I'm doing backups to a USB drive (currently on a
> Windows machine using Samba to get there). I'm tarring each directory off
> root (/var, /etc, /home, ...). Luckily, I have not had to restore from a
> backup yet. I'd like to do a "bare metal" backup so I can restore
> everything, including boot code, in one restore operation. I'm considering
> doing it with Norton Ghost, but would dd be able to do it? Any other
> suggestions?
> 
> THANKS!
> 
> Harold
> 
> --
> FCC Rules Online at http://www.hallikainen.com
> 
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