Backup Central

Right now we backup 2x/day to a local filesystem (same machine). This works out great.
After 3 months of this, the filesystem where the backups are stored is started to get full.
I want to move clear out the oldest month (3 months ago), but keep it available for use.
What we are going to do is stripe a few 250gb drives to make one large filesystem.
This however will be a remote machine.
First, I want to copy the entire filesystem from the local to the remote machine, then
remove the oldest month of data from the local machine (to free up some space).
OK...no problem.
Now...next month, how can I move the newest month's worth of backups to the remote
machine, and still keep them as date specific differential files. Aside from every backup
rdiff-backup to both the remote and local mirror, then at the end of the months only
clear out the local filesystem file, and the remote will always have all available backups.
yes, we are still backing up to tape, but it's soooo much faster to restore from a HD that
is in a directory format already, rather than parse through a tar file each time.
================
question #2
================
Prior to moving the filesystem over, I want to pre-load the new machine with a couple
years of monthly backups. I basically will restore the tapes to another filesystem, then
run rdiff-backup on that filesystem, starting with oldest tape and working our way forward.
My question here is Can I set a date that is not the current date for the rdiff-backup.
So, if I'm starting with the Feb 2000 tape, can I tell rdiff that the date to use is 02/28/2000
and not the current system date.
I understand that once I start this process, I will not be able to add in any older tapes than
the first one I started with (can I?).
Once all my old backup tapes are loaded.
Is there a way I can merge the current mirrored filesystem on top of all these older backups
or will be be stuck with having two filesystem to pull backups from?

Thanks
George
George Gallen
Senior Programmer/Analyst
Accounting/Data Division
ggallen < at > slackinc.com
ph:856.848.1000 Ext 220
SLACK Incorporated - An innovative information, education and management company
http://www.slackinc.com

On Mon, 4 Oct 2004, George Gallen wrote:

My question here is Can I set a date that is not the current date for
the rdiff-backup. So, if I'm starting with the Feb 2000 tape, can I tell
rdiff that the date to use is 02/28/2000 and not the current system
date.

you might get away with just hacking Time.py, setcurtime()
setcurtime_local() functions...

or try a larger hammer if you're on linux --
http://www.ex-parrot.com/~chris/stuff/timeshift-README


I understand that once I start this process, I will not be able to add
in any older tapes than the first one I started with (can I?).

you can only go forward.

Is there a way I can merge the current mirrored filesystem on top of all
these older backups or will be be stuck with having two filesystem to
pull backups from?

after creating the mirror of all your tape backups you could one by one
restore your disk backups to a temp directory and add them to the tape
mirror...

-dean

-----Original Message-----
From: dean gaudet [mailto:dean-list-rdiff-backup < at > arctic.org ([email]dean-list-rdiff-backup < at > arctic.org[/email])]
Sent: Monday, October 04, 2004 3:34 PM
To: George Gallen
Cc: rdiff-backup-users < at > nongnu.org
Subject: Re: [rdiff-backup-users] Filesystem not big enough to hold all
diff files, want to keep them, and add others.


or try a larger hammer if you're on linux --
http://www.ex-parrot.com/~chris/stuff/timeshift-README
Cool. So this program only affect the current process, and any
spawned processes?? and all the other processes remain at the current time/date?
WOW...that's usefull.


after creating the mirror of all your tape backups you could
one by one
restore your disk backups to a temp directory and add them to the tape
mirror...
With 2x/day down from 3x/day that about 250 restores....ouch.

Thanks,
George

-dean