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From: Andrew Sackville-West on 15 Jun 2010 14:30
On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 10:59:46AM -0500, Ron Johnson wrote:
> On 06/15/2010 09:48 AM, Lisi wrote:
> >
> >Thanks for this. I was originally responding to Andrew's saying:
> ><quote>
> >There are many many ways to make take backups beyond having a disk big
> >enough to hold the data.
> ></quote>
> >
> >I can think of very few - and was interested in what he was thinking of.
> >Incremental/differential backups are not really practical, since she will be
> >at school. A periodic dd (or Clonezilla?) of the whole drive and more
> >frequent updates of her personal data (of which I understand that there is
> >not much) would be the optimum, but a trifle pricey, so I am still looking at
> >alternative possibilities.
> >
>
> I wrote a script that only backs up our data directories (including
> much of /home) into a bunch of tarballs, excluding "junk" folders
> like caches, thumbnails, trash, etc, and compressing most but not
> stuff like image and OOo document directories.
>
> Each backup goes in a separate, dated directory.
>
> For huge binary directories (like uncompressible video and audio), I
> simply do a "cp -vau" from the "live" tree to the backup tree.
>
> The bottom line, though, is that *yes*, you *do* need enough disk
> space for the backup data.

Yeah, my choice of words was unfortunate. What I really meant was
something along the lines of:

The inability to find a 1.3TB external disk it not a reason not to
take backups. If the data needs backing up, then there are solutions
besides one big honking disk to copy it onto. Tape drives, big stacks
of DVD-R/RW's, arrays of smaller disks, leased disk space onlines
somewhere, etc.

I think the OP said something like: I have 1.3 TB and it's too big to
backup. This of course is patently ridiculous. meh.

To address Lisi's issue, I would suggest a cronjob that checks for
network connectivity and then if it's got network, runs rsnapshot (or
rdiff-backup) over passwordless ssh to a server somewhere. That would
be fairly lightweight, once the initial copy is made. And it would be
secure and easy in the longrun. If the user needs local backup, then a
usb drive with rsnapshot would be reasonable. It creates duplicate
filetrees at each snapshot, but uses hardlinks for unchanged files to
keep the total size from ballooning out of control. I think it's
pretty slick because it maintains some of the size control of
differential backup but also makes access to the complete filetree at
a given time a snap.

very much my .02

A
From: Ron Johnson on 15 Jun 2010 14:50
On 06/15/2010 01:18 PM, Andrew Sackville-West wrote:
[snip]
>
> I think the OP said something like: I have 1.3 TB and it's too big to
> backup. This of course is patently ridiculous. meh.
>

Right. You're a fool to buy a Lexus if you can't afford the (way
more than bare legal minimum) auto insurance.

--
Seek truth from facts.


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From: Camaleón on 15 Jun 2010 14:50
On Tue, 15 Jun 2010 18:49:25 +0100, Lisi wrote:

> On Tuesday 15 June 2010 18:06:51 Camaleón wrote:

>> Why not practical? Just curious O:-)
>
> Because I shan't have hold of the computer for long enough or often
> enough!

But it's "her" backup and "her" data. She should care about how to do
things like these, whatever place she is (home, university, work...).

>> The main drawback I see for "dd" or "clonezilla" is that they are very
>> "slowness". It takes much time (and space!) to make a full copy (or
>> image) of the disk and so not very practical because at last the user
>> stops doing the backup on a regular basis :-(
>
> The user isn't going to do the backup on a (frequent) regular basis
> anyway. What I am hoping is to be able to dd (or Clonezilla or
> something) the drive periodically and take a snapshot of the state of
> the machine at that point. That will catch all the slow moving/changing
> files and facilitate a simple restoration if needed.

Oh, but image restoration is not "that" easy, there are many things to
tweak, I mean, is not just clicking "restore" button and you're done :-)

And full images need huge space!

> With luck, her personal stuff will fit on a CD or two. Or, since we
> are anyway assuming that I shall be able to find the money, I may get
> her a DVD RW.
> That she might do reasonably often.

I would avoid DVD media as much as possible, at least I find it not
suitable as "primary" backup (remember "RW" media has a limit of number
of writings!). They are not very easy to manage (it requires a dedicated
program to record the files), it's space-limited (compared to hard
disks), they are not cheap (byte/€) and reading and writing operations
are very, I mean, *very* slow :-)

> Another possibility that I haven't yet explored is to get a NAS or
> something and back all of our machines up to it.

The best bet I see here is an USB case and a separate hard disk (min. 500
GiB, and as data space needings increases, the disk can be replaced very
easily). There you can leave the full system images (clonezilla or "dd"
based) as well as normal data backups that she can also copy into DVD at
her convenience.

Greetings,

--
Camaleón


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From: Lisi on 15 Jun 2010 15:30
On Tuesday 15 June 2010 19:09:28 Ron Johnson wrote:
> *Teach* her.  She's in Uni, correct?  Thus, she should be
> responsible enough to take care of her own data by sticking in a USB
> drive and running a script.

Two people divided by a common language....

No, she's at school, where school in this case means an establishment for
children from 3 to 18. In American terms (so far as I can work it out) she
is in grade 8.

And yes, she needs to learn to administer her own computer. And will. But
_I_ don't want her to lose her journal, and I want to minimise the length of
time it would take me to restore her (elderly) laptop to its present state!

Lisi


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From: Rob Owens on 15 Jun 2010 19:50
On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 06:49:25PM +0100, Lisi wrote:
> On Tuesday 15 June 2010 18:06:51 Camale�n wrote:
> > On Tue, 15 Jun 2010 15:48:04 +0100, Lisi wrote:
> > > On Tuesday 15 June 2010 14:40:44 Camale�n wrote:
> > >> I would differentiate between "backup" data and "archived" data.
> >
> > (...)
> >
> > > Thanks for this. I was originally responding to Andrew's saying:
> > > <quote>
> > > There are many many ways to make take backups beyond having a disk big
> > > enough to hold the data.
> > > </quote>
> > >
> > > I can think of very few - and was interested in what he was thinking of.
> > > Incremental/differential backups are not really practical, since she
> > > will be at school.
> >
> > Why not practical? Just curious O:-)
>
> Because I shan't have hold of the computer for long enough or often enough!
>
> > > A periodic dd (or Clonezilla?) of the whole drive
> > > and more frequent updates of her personal data (of which I understand
> > > that there is not much) would be the optimum, but a trifle pricey, so I
> > > am still looking at alternative possibilities.
> >
> > The main drawback I see for "dd" or "clonezilla" is that they are very
> > "slowness". It takes much time (and space!) to make a full copy (or
> > image) of the disk and so not very practical because at last the user
> > stops doing the backup on a regular basis :-(
>
> The user isn't going to do the backup on a (frequent) regular basis anyway.
> What I am hoping is to be able to dd (or Clonezilla or something) the drive
> periodically and take a snapshot of the state of the machine at that point.
> That will catch all the slow moving/changing files and facilitate a simple
> restoration if needed. With luck, her personal stuff will fit on a CD or
> two. Or, since we are anyway assuming that I shall be able to find the
> money, I may get her a DVD RW. That she might do reasonably often.
>
> Another possibility that I haven't yet explored is to get a NAS or something
> and back all of our machines up to it.
>
Have you investigated BackupPC? It's a pretty slick program, available
in the Debian repos. It can use rsync, tar, or smb as its transfer
mechanism. Rsync of course is best for over the internet backups,
because it minimizes bandwidth usage.

It pools common files, so the
storage requirements per machine go down as you back up more and more
machines. (If you both have a copy of the same JPEG on your machines,
BackupPC will only keep one copy, but it knows that it belongs to both
of you).

It runs automatically, but not through cron. It will retry backups if
the host machine (the one it's trying to back up) is disconnected from
the network.

The remote user's machine should run sshd and wait for BackupPC to
connect. Alternatively, the remote user's machine can ssh to the
BackupPC machine and set up a tunnel using reverse port forwarding. Or
you could use a VPN.

I use BackupPC to back up all my own computers, plus my parents', my
sister's, and a friend's. Most of them probably don't even remember
that they are being backed up, because it requires no interaction on
their part.

-Rob


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