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Automate backups on Linux
ibm.com — The loss of critical data can prove devastating. Still, millions of professionals ignore backing up their data. While individual reasons vary, one of the most common explanations is that performing routine backups can be a real chore. Because machines excel at mundane and repetitive tasks, the key to reducing the inherent drudgery and the natural h
bonlebon- 671 diggs
- digg it
- crampy20, on 07/08/2008, -8/+2And of course this is news
- svensko, on 07/08/2008, -0/+3Maybe not news but still lots of good information in the comments section.
- voodoozombie, on 07/09/2008, -0/+1Hey, I've been using UUCP over a 300 baud modem to a backup computer in Canada, so this looks awesome!
- Chickenlip, on 07/08/2008, -0/+23What happened to plain old rsync, or even cp -ru ?
- msmayhew, on 07/09/2008, -0/+2I agree. I have a cron job that runs every night (or morning) at 3am. It mounts a usb drive, rsync -vrlptog {multiple directories} and umounts the usb drive. Best backup system I've ever had.
- keymoo, on 07/08/2008, -6/+7This is the real deal
http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/- Stonekeeper, on 07/09/2008, -0/+4I dunno why you're getting dugg down. BackupPC is awesome. Our backuppc currently has 600G of data in it.
- GothAlice, on 07/08/2008, -2/+4Uh… for local backups (and even remote with a little fiddling) faubackup gives much better archival. It's the software that gave Apple the idea for Time Machine… it uses hardlinks to refer back to unmodified files in the backup set. Easy to automate (I have my servers send me IMs as the backup progresses) and intuitive to restore from (one folder per backup run per archive set).
- leerayIG88, on 07/08/2008, -2/+3I would use ntbackup. We both win! *hugs*
- vladimirpoopen, on 07/24/2008, -1/+11Like Chicken... been using rsync over SSH for 8 years. And been using rsnapshot a bit more lately.
- greensky, on 07/08/2008, -1/+8rsnapshot (rsnapshot.org) over ssh using sshkeys ftw
- reginaldino, on 07/08/2008, -1/+10a nice rdiff-backup script via cron is all that is required
- centran, on 07/08/2008, -0/+1damn... beat me too it. I was writing too much which was:
I was looking into several backup solutions a while back. The option I settled with was rdiff-backup
http://www.nongnu.org/rdiff-backup/
It does incremental backups and uses rsync to transfer only what has changed. Until you get into more complicated things like restoring, deleting increments, or backing up offsite, it is as easy as "rdiff-backup src dest".
It can do off-site backups through ssh. I decieded to just do a local backup several times a day(to get increments) and then in the middle of the night I rsync the backup dir offsite. - boot20, on 07/08/2008, -0/+2Too true. What, rdiff-back cron jobs aren't good enough? I mean honestly, how hard is that?
Bah....I swear IBM smokes crack...
- centran, on 07/08/2008, -0/+1damn... beat me too it. I was writing too much which was:
- InorganicMatter, on 07/08/2008, -2/+4I'm kind of disappointed they didn't mention Bacula. The SQL backend for the catalog and a lightning-fast file daemon makes for some amazingly fast performance (had to restore over the network a few weeks ago - 65MB/s writes!!!). Additionally, it is cross-platform and network-based, so you can also back up your Windows, BSD, and Mac OS clients as well. Works great on Windows because it uses 2003/Vista's Volume Shadow Copy, so you can do complete OS images. It's a little tricky to set up, but no more difficult than all that BASH scripting and security key configuring they showed in the article.
- mwyres, on 07/08/2008, -0/+3agreed - Bacula IS a pain to set up, but in terms of saving money on expensive backup tapes, it's ability to do fast, safe, and reliable backups to ANY mountable medium, it's hard to beat.
Once you get your head around the messy configuration files, it just runs and runs and runs...
- mwyres, on 07/08/2008, -0/+3agreed - Bacula IS a pain to set up, but in terms of saving money on expensive backup tapes, it's ability to do fast, safe, and reliable backups to ANY mountable medium, it's hard to beat.
- ruddy, on 07/08/2008, -1/+9just use rsync
- apachetoolbox, on 07/08/2008, -2/+4another vote for rdiff-backup.
- rmxz, on 07/08/2008, -2/+9-1 for not mentioning rsync.
-2 for not mentioning snapback2 which is a wrapper around rsync and ln -- it's the easiest way I've seen to create the rolling snaphosts (so you can go back in time to yesterday, or last week, etc) without taking up much disk space (by using hard links). - sigmaman2, on 07/08/2008, -2/+1Does anyone know of a trick/script/program to get those "One-touch Backup" external hard drives to work with Linux? I can backup manually, but I like the convenience of just pressing one button to have my system backup itself, without me having to log in.
- slochewie, on 07/08/2008, -2/+1I'm a bacula fan too.
- PatrickBrown, on 07/08/2008, -3/+5crontab -e
rsync
done.- andrewtheart, on 07/08/2008, -1/+2I did that and I get some strange man page!
*******
rsync version 2.6.9 protocol version 29
Copyright (C) 1996-2006 by Andrew Tridgell, Wayne Davison, and others.
Capabilities: 64-bit files, socketpairs, hard links, symlinks,
batchfiles, inplace, IPv6, ACLs,
64-bit system inums, 64-bit internal inums
rsync comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, and you
are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions. See the GNU
General Public Licence for details.
rsync is a file transfer program capable of efficient remote update
via a fast differencing algorithm.
*******
Your method sucks!!!!
[/PlayingDumb]
- andrewtheart, on 07/08/2008, -1/+2I did that and I get some strange man page!
- JohnnyKdiggs, on 07/09/2008, -3/+2Or you could just use a backup program like TimeVault:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TimeVault/ScreenShots - YodaJones, on 07/09/2008, -2/+1Good article.
- sholdowa, on 07/09/2008, -1/+0OpenSSH_3.5p1, SSH protocols 1.5/2.0, OpenSSL 0x0090701f
Must have been written ages ago. ssh is at 5.0p1, and ssl 0.9.8h. This really is very basic stuff - the arc script should save stderr, and use as a searchable index, mysqldump should try and create a consistent snapshot, etc
The real wtf with a lot of proposed solutions is that the primary use for backup sets is to recover the single file that got lost/corrupted/overwritten. Reverting to Tuesday teatime isn't really a solution for that... - bineteri, on 07/09/2008, -1/+3This story is less about how to backup things, and more about how to connect to a remote machine using ssh, an ssh key and ssh-agent.
The underlying concept as to why you'd want to connect to the remote machine is to do backups. Of course, its good to suggest rsync but this still gets you to a password prompt. The story gives a way to automate remote copies (backups) in a way that's as secure as possible.- piedood, on 07/14/2008, -0/+1Yeah I think the article should be titled 'How to set up SSH for use with your own backup scripts', since it is more focused on the SSH aspects of backup, as opposed to 'Automated backups on Linux' which is misleading.
It does teach you pretty much how everything works, which is something I like about IBM articles, including source code and detailed explanation.
Personally, I use rsnapshot over ssh with a set up much like the article
- piedood, on 07/14/2008, -0/+1Yeah I think the article should be titled 'How to set up SSH for use with your own backup scripts', since it is more focused on the SSH aspects of backup, as opposed to 'Automated backups on Linux' which is misleading.
- strupatn, on 07/09/2008, -6/+1Hahaha, professionals don't use Linux. Hippie geeks and old bearded guys do. They don't need to back stuff up because they're not doing anything important.
Backup software for Linux... I love it. Hahaha.- teaguecl, on 07/09/2008, -1/+2Are you insane, or really that ignorant?
- strupatn, on 07/09/2008, -0/+1I was being fecesious.
- teaguecl, on 07/09/2008, -1/+2Are you insane, or really that ignorant?
- brettalton, on 07/09/2008, -1/+5And you can use my 'rsync over ssh' script here for Ubuntu: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=639979
It installs a cron job, uses logs, created a 4096-bit encryption key and can be uninstalled at any time.- tcpip4lyfe, on 07/09/2008, -0/+14096 is a little excessive dont you think?
- brettalton, on 07/09/2008, -0/+1Maybe. I think its illegal to use that much encryption in the USA too.
- shizeon, on 07/09/2008, -0/+1Great script, however not really 'secure' since you are using an unencrypted private key... Check out the keychain script in the article. Pretty cool compromise.
- tcpip4lyfe, on 07/09/2008, -0/+14096 is a little excessive dont you think?
- freedomics, on 07/09/2008, -1/+0BackupPC... It's a set of open-source (free!) perl scripts with a web-based front end. I've used it for a couple of years to back up six linux servers, one W2K server, and a couple of dozen XP desktops. What's really cool is that BackupPC does data deduplication both across systems and across backups. Also, BackupPC doesn't require a database to keep track of the files it is managing. Instead, it makes extensive use of hard links. It takes a bit of time to configure, but for a small business, it's great.
Clonezilla... For complete partition-level or hard disk backups, Clonezilla rocks. It's great for getting a snapshot of an entire system. I've used it to recover a Vista laptop with no problem. - shizeon, on 07/09/2008, -1/+2I think the gem here is mention of the keychain script for using making a more secure rsync,ssh,scp public key system. I didn't know about it and have been using passwordless private keys for automated tasks, far from ideal. No longer. Digg.
- coldmilk, on 07/09/2008, -0/+2Digg because it has the word Linux in the title :-P
- dreamszz, on 07/10/2008, -0/+1There are other good backup solutions for Linux in general. rsync and ssh are easy yet powerful, true. But for database dumps, although rsync could do it just fine, I kinda agree this is a better solution as it gives you your daily database dump in one single file. That way you can also use it for archival purposes or to roll-back to a certain day.
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