[techtalk] Backup strategy

[Brian Sweeney]

Jen-

We're currently using Amanda here and I've been pretty happy with that so
far.  It lacks in a few features, but it really nicely manages the backup
scheme for you (dynamically creating the levels based on need), and it's
recovery procedures are also quite straightforward.  It also uses a holding
disk, allowing for multiple simultaneous dumps.

You can check it out at www.amanda.org.

Also, for a general intro to bacukps, I highly recommend the O'Reilly book
"Unix Backup & Recovery".  It's got information on a myriad of backup
utilities, and good introductory strategies.

Good Luck!

-Brian

> From: "jennyw" <jennyw at dangerousideas.com>
> To: <techtalk at linuxchix.org>
> Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 15:05:13 -0700
> Subject: [techtalk] Backup strategy
>
> Can anyone suggest where I can go to find out more about backup
> strategies?
>
> I have Linux on two machines, and Windows NT on another.  I was
> thinking of
> backing up the Windows machine using SMB mounted directories.
> The hardware
> I'm using is a Seagate 24 GB Scorpion DAT drive running off of an Adaptec
> AHA-2940 controller (to which a CD-RW drive is also attached).
> I'm running
> on Progeny Debian 1.0 (which is based on Debian 2.2).  This is what I
> eventually want to do ... at this point, though, I can't even get the tape
> drive to do a simple backup.
>
> I've tried using tar (e.g., "tar cvf /dev/st0 ." from my home directory),
> taper, and a few other free software packages (ones that have .deb
> packages), but nothing seems to be able to handle the drive correctly
> (they'll back up a few files and then choke when they get to the first big
> file, which is an ISO image -- ~500 MB).  I haven't tried to read anything
> off of the tape yet.
>
> At this point, I'm not sure where to go.  I probably need to learn more
> about how to configure and test tape drives under Linux -- something I'm
> pretty clueless about.
>
> Unfortulatey, most of the info I've seen on the Web and in books so far
> describes floppy tape drives or other lower capacity drives (e.g., taper's
> Web site says it can only support up to 4 GB). I couldn't find a howto on
> backups. Can anyone point to better references? Or suggest some backup
> packages?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Jen
>
>
>