Backing up Ubuntu

Gene Heskett gheskett at shentel.net
Mon Jul 1 18:36:47 UTC 2019


On Monday 01 July 2019 07:08:00 Jared Norris wrote:

> Good evening all,
>
> I've been helping my family set up windows and mac machines lately and
> been impressed at their backup options. This put me on to looking at
> my Ubuntu backup options and I feel a little hard done by in
> comparison, which is odd as it's usually the other way around.
>
> I thought it might just be I don't know all that's out there despite a
> few hours poking around online so I thought I'd put it out to you all.
> Is there such a thing as a good back up system/s for Ubuntu ? My use
> case is to achieve 2 things:
> 1 - Incremental file history - if I break a config file or other day
> to day file I'd like to be able to go back to a specific file and
> restore the single file.
> 2 - System snapshot - if I really break things I'd like the
> opportunity to reinstall as it was x amount of time before the break
>
> I can't make the deja-dup tool that comes with Ubuntu do either of
> these things reliably (it only restores everything from a date and
> even then, if trying to back up a whole system snapshot it gives
> errors about being unable to read certain files that are obviously in
> use).
>
> In the past I've done manual backups with rsync but finding myself
> looking for something more automated.
>
> Is there anything out there better than my manual rsync to achieve the
> 2 types of backups I'm looking for?
>
> Regards,
>
> Jared Norris

I've been using amanda since around '98-'99. Does incrementels according 
to your max level0 intervals and juggles the schedule to try and use the 
same amount of media every night.  All automatic, just put it in your 
crontab but for additional feel good, you can set up a separate weekly 
config to do all level 0's. But I've never felt the need. I use vtapes 
on a big hard drive, which means its random access, so recovery's are 
done anywhere up to 50x faster than when dealing with expensive and not 
near as dependable tapes.

That statement might sound foolish, but the tape drives I've had all 
insisted on spending the thanksgiving to new years holidays in Oklahoma 
City getting refurbished.  That got tiresome and expensive, so I 
switched to vtapes on spinning rust, starting with a 1 terabyte drive, 
that when first checked had 25 re-allocated sectors. I put fresh 
firmware in it, and 80,000+ spinning hours later, still has only 25 
re-allocated sectors.  Had I stayed with tapes I would have had over 2 
thousand dollars in replacement tapes tossed in the can.

Now I am about 3/4's of the way thru 60 vtapes  on a 2T drive, backing up 
5 machines nightly.  So I have 60 backups, one a night, and when its 
used the last one, will reuse the first on again, etc, etc.

Amanda is a strong willed program, but it doesn't run on a schedule you 
set other than doing a level 0 within the cycle days you set.  But if 
the machine is accessible, amanda will get the job done. Its you who 
have to get out of the mindset of doing all level 0's after the close of 
business of Friday nights.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
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 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>




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