[Techtalk] seeking backup solution recommendations

[Little Girl]

Hey there,

Meryll Larkin wrote:

>Whoops!  You are correct.  I did receive a response from you!  You
>wrote about GRsync and I forgot about it because you mentioned "dry
>run button".

Blast. My powers must now be fading. I guess I'll have to go for
flight instead of invisibility.

>I'm working with the Linux command line and I SHOULD have asked -
>what happens with GRSync if I don't have access to "GUI"?

It's just a front-end for rsync, so you'd want to use that on the
command line in its stead when you haven't got access to the GUI. I
see from your response that you're already familiar with rsync, but
for those who are reading this who aren't, when you run Grsync, it
displays the rsync command it used near the top of the log file it
produces once it's finished and that can be used as a reference for
writing your own scripts.

>Yes, I know  how to do ssh X forwarding, the problem is that the
>connection is so slow... screen redraw takes forever and it always
>feels like it is about to freeze or drop.    If there is a command
>line menu or command line options, that would be better for me.   I
>guess I can research that, too.

It offers command-line access, but it runs the GUI and either closes
it or leaves it open afterwards, so I don't think that would work for
what you're doing.

>I have used (regular) rsync for backups for years, and it is the
>solution I use in my own home - I created an rsync script that runs
>weekly with cron.

Then you have more experience with it than I do. I used mirrordir for
years, but it's no longer available or advised, so I had briefly
switched to rsync, which is quite a powerful command. There are lots
of option and switch hoops you can jump through to get it to do
exactly what you want and I was never fully confident that I had made
the correct decisions with it, which was why I eventually decided to
go the lazy route and just use a GUI. It was especially nice that
Grsync gave me the ability to compare its command with the one I had
come up with on my own as a learning experience.

By the way, another thing that had initially drawn me to Grsync was
the user's ability to customize it by adding more to the command than
its GUI offers, so if there's something rsync offers that you don't
find in all the little tabs and checkboxes, you can add it in
manually. It also offers the ability to specify commands to run
before and after the backup. I've always appreciated programs that
offer you options, give you the power to customize them, or both.

>My experience with (regular) rsync and the tapes that I am using is
>that tar with the right BlockSize and blocking-factor tends to be
>faster. Faster is important when the issue is input to a single tape
>of a repository with 25T of data.

I wish I had a 25T circumstance going on here for comparison, but I'm
small-fry compared to that. Under the circumstances, Grsync would be
too slow for you, then.

>Still good to hear of another option though.  Someone will probably
>benefit from your information.

Hopefully. Anyway, hopefully you'll find a solution that's a good
fit. I know what a relief it can be to get it to "just work" and then
let it just do its thing from then on.

-- 
Little Girl

There is no spoon.