[Techtalk] What is you backup strategy for home use?

[Alain Tesio]

On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 22:23:20 -0500
Angelina Carlton <brat at magma.ca> wrote:

> 2. the only thing I back up is data, no system files.

You should also think at configuration files typically in /etc.
Saving the state of the system, like the output of dpkg --get-selection
on debian and fdisk -l can be useful to reinstall a system from scratch.

> 3. all the target data is in /home on each client. /home is the only
> folder that will be backed up.

If you can afford the disk space and bandwith, it's easier to
backup all except what you don't need so you have to explicitely
write what to exclude and don't forget anything like imap mailboxes
or databases dumps (you have an exclusion file and use it with
rsync --exclude-from)

> What I don't know is the best software for this. I know it is a
> difficult solution as there are so many ways to do it. 
> 
> One package that looks good is rdiff-backup[1] but it doesn't appear
> to do anything with the files on the other end, as in archive them and
> then rotate the tarballs etc..

The most usual way is rsync, rdiff-backup is useful if you want
to get previous versions. You can use rdiff-backup --remove-older-than
to delete the old remote incremental files.
Pay attention to backup the files with their attributes.

> I have heard of people even using cvs for backups, is this worth
> looking into?

I've seen it used to keep an history of configuration files, it sometimes
helps finding the source of a problem.

There is cvs-conf in debian, the source code is weird, it looks like the
program is the make file.

It's essentially for troubleshooting and reverting to old configuration
(like for source code but it just observes the changes automatically),
not for backup purposes in itself. Then you backup the cvsroot directory.

Alain