Backup Central

Please forgive me if this is called out somewhere, I have tried to read
through most of the rdiff-backup docs I could fine (and man there is a
lot!).

Specifically, what I'd like to do is solve this problem:

1. I'd like an almost complete backup of my entire server from /
2. I know I have to exclude a few things to prevent bad problems (no
/proc, and --exclude-sockets also seemed to be necessary)
3. There are a couple of directories that I don't want at all (some
website mirrors I host), so those go into --exclude as well.

Now here is the fun part and my question: I think it would be convenient
to have my /var/log directory backed up, but I really don't see the
value in recording every incremental change of all those files, so I was
hoping to implement the following rule:

4. Copy /var/log, but don't keep more than 1 incremental of it (or none
if doing just one is difficult).

I've thought of a couple of ways to do this:
a. exclude the directory from rdiff-backup, and then just rsync that one
directory afterward (but would subsequent rdiff-backups delete those files?
b. run rdiff-backup twice, once excluding /var/log and once including
only it and using the --remove-older-than 1B option
c. run rdiff-backup twice, but store the the /var/log in a completely
separate target tree (seems safest, but also the most work to maintain
and restore from)
d. Some magic bullet I've overlooked

Thoughts or advice?

-Daniel


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Hi Daniel,

On 2009-10-10 01:03 UTC Daniel Einspanjer wrote:
1. I'd like an almost complete backup of my entire server from /
2. I know I have to exclude a few things to prevent bad problems (no
/proc, and --exclude-sockets also seemed to be necessary)
3. There are a couple of directories that I don't want at all (some
website mirrors I host), so those go into --exclude as well.

That sounds right

Now here is the fun part and my question: I think it would be
convenient to have my /var/log directory backed up, but I really
don't see the value in recording every incremental change of all
those files, so I was hoping to implement the following rule:

4. Copy /var/log, but don't keep more than 1 incremental of it (or
none if doing just one is difficult).

I've thought of a couple of ways to do this:
a. exclude the directory from rdiff-backup, and then just rsync that
one directory afterward (but would subsequent rdiff-backups delete
those files?
b. run rdiff-backup twice, once excluding /var/log and
once including only it and using the --remove-older-than 1B option
c. run rdiff-backup twice, but store the the /var/log in a completely
separate target tree (seems safest, but also the most work to
maintain and restore from)
d. Some magic bullet I've overlooked

I'd go for d This could be very close to a:
Run rdiff-backup and exclude /var/log, then run rsync to a destination
*outside the rdiff-backup repository* (and document this fact well).

c is also good, but then you have your increments (which you don't
want), and would have to delete them, which would be a waste of
resources. Also, since Log files tend to change during backup, and
rdiff-backup (currently) doesn't backup files that have changed during
the backup at all, you could end up having no backup of some logs at
all.

b will probably not work on the same repository.

Patrick.

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