Backup Central

Hi. I am a newbie using rsnapshot -- so please bear with me.

I have a number of lvms on my system -- what I have set up so far is
just to backup all the files, without regard to which lvm they are on,
since they are mounted. HOwever, there seem to be a few lvm parameters
in rsnapshot, but I can't figure out how to actually do this. My
volumes are under /dev/mapper/linux--files-<lvname> , so what do I put
for linux_lvm_vgpath ? Also, how do I then backup the volumes, do I
need separate backup points for each or what?

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

--
Your life is like a penny. You're going to lose it. The question is:
How do
you spend it?

John Covici
covici < at > ccs.covici.com

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure
contains a definitive record of customers, application performance,
security threats, fraudulent activity, and more. Splunk takes this
data and makes sense of it. IT sense. And common sense.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-novd2d
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On Fri, Nov 25, 2011 at 1:49 PM, <covici < at > ccs.covici.com> wrote:
Hi.  I am a newbie using rsnapshot -- so please bear with me.

I have a number of lvms on my system -- what I have set up so far is
just to backup all the files, without regard to which lvm they are on,
since they are mounted.  HOwever, there seem to be a few lvm parameters
in rsnapshot, but I can't figure out how to actually do this.    My
volumes are under /dev/mapper/linux--files-<lvname> , so what do I put
for linux_lvm_vgpath ?  Also, how do I then backup the volumes, do I
need separate backup points for each or what?

What??? Rsnapshot and its underlying tool, rsync, rely on files amd
filesystems. They care not in the *slightest* what LVM is involved,
unless a subdirectory is on a different filesystem. Then the "rsync
-x" option will prevent a backup from descending to the subdirectory's
mounted filesystem, and you'll need to list it separately as a backup
target.

Rsync cares about where it is *mounted*. One approach with LVM that
I've found useful is to pause a database, snapshot the LVM "volume",
mount the snapshot, and run rsnapshot against the mounted and
read-only LVM snapshot. Then yoiu have to unmount and discard the
snapshot, because you can have only one LVM snapshot and when the
changes of the active filesystem exceed the allocated working space of
the snapshot, chaos ensues.

Frankly, I consider LVM pretty useless for most modern applications.
The difficulty of shrinking a live filesystem makes it awkward, and
the extra layer of kernel filtering and manipulation to handle volume
groups and physical volumes is a pointless and performance throttling
waste of resources in most environments.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

--
Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
How do
you spend it?

        John Covici
        covici < at > ccs.covici.com

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure
contains a definitive record of customers, application performance,
security threats, fraudulent activity, and more. Splunk takes this
data and makes sense of it. IT sense. And common sense.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-novd2d
_______________________________________________
rsnapshot-discuss mailing list
rsnapshot-discuss < at > lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rsnapshot-discuss


------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure
contains a definitive record of customers, application performance,
security threats, fraudulent activity, and more. Splunk takes this
data and makes sense of it. IT sense. And common sense.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-novd2d
_______________________________________________
rsnapshot-discuss mailing list
rsnapshot-discuss < at > lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rsnapshot-discuss

Nico Kadel-Garcia <nkadel < at > gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Nov 25, 2011 at 1:49 PM, <covici < at > ccs.covici.com> wrote:
Hi.  I am a newbie using rsnapshot -- so please bear with me.

I have a number of lvms on my system -- what I have set up so far is
just to backup all the files, without regard to which lvm they are on,
since they are mounted.  HOwever, there seem to be a few lvm parameters
in rsnapshot, but I can't figure out how to actually do this.    My
volumes are under /dev/mapper/linux--files-<lvname> , so what do I put
for linux_lvm_vgpath ?  Also, how do I then backup the volumes, do I
need separate backup points for each or what?

What??? Rsnapshot and its underlying tool, rsync, rely on files amd
filesystems. They care not in the *slightest* what LVM is involved,
unless a subdirectory is on a different filesystem. Then the "rsync
-x" option will prevent a backup from descending to the subdirectory's
mounted filesystem, and you'll need to list it separately as a backup
target.

Rsync cares about where it is *mounted*. One approach with LVM that
I've found useful is to pause a database, snapshot the LVM "volume",
mount the snapshot, and run rsnapshot against the mounted and
read-only LVM snapshot. Then yoiu have to unmount and discard the
snapshot, because you can have only one LVM snapshot and when the
changes of the active filesystem exceed the allocated working space of
the snapshot, chaos ensues.

Frankly, I consider LVM pretty useless for most modern applications.
The difficulty of shrinking a live filesystem makes it awkward, and
the extra layer of kernel filtering and manipulation to handle volume
groups and physical volumes is a pointless and performance throttling
waste of resources in most environments.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

--
Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
How do
you spend it?

        John Covici
        covici < at > ccs.covici.com

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure
contains a definitive record of customers, application performance,
security threats, fraudulent activity, and more. Splunk takes this
data and makes sense of it. IT sense. And common sense.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-novd2d
_______________________________________________
rsnapshot-discuss mailing list
rsnapshot-discuss < at > lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rsnapshot-discuss


Thanks -- I was just wondering about the builtin support for lvm which
seems to be in rsnapshot.

--
Your life is like a penny. You're going to lose it. The question is:
How do
you spend it?

John Covici
covici < at > ccs.covici.com

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure
contains a definitive record of customers, application performance,
security threats, fraudulent activity, and more. Splunk takes this
data and makes sense of it. IT sense. And common sense.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-novd2d
_______________________________________________
rsnapshot-discuss mailing list
rsnapshot-discuss < at > lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rsnapshot-discuss

On Fri, Nov 25, 2011 at 04:07:41PM -0600, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
On Fri, Nov 25, 2011 at 1:49 PM, <covici < at > ccs.covici.com> wrote:
I have a number of lvms on my system -- what I have set up so far is
just to backup all the files, without regard to which lvm they are on,
since they are mounted.  HOwever, there seem to be a few lvm parameters
in rsnapshot, but I can't figure out how to actually do this.    My
volumes are under /dev/mapper/linux--files-<lvname> , so what do I put
for linux_lvm_vgpath ?  Also, how do I then backup the volumes, do I
need separate backup points for each or what?
What??? Rsnapshot and its underlying tool, rsync, rely on files amd
filesystems. They care not in the *slightest* what LVM is involved.

All true, but the question was how to use a specific config option, not
the justification for it. Rsnapshot specifically has support for
creating and destroying Linux LVM snapshots, and so to that extent it
most certainly *does* care.

Frankly, I consider LVM pretty useless for most modern applications.

But jolly useful if you want to make an internally-consistent backup of
a filesystem whose contents are constantly in flux.

I'm not sure what you'd put in linux_lvm_vgpath, because I'm not
familiar with Linux LVM. The code for this feature originally came from
Ben Low, in 2007 - here's the mailing list thread about it, which may
help:
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_name=5FF04184-8AD8-4514-9646-1A37EA093AA5%40bdlow.net&forum_name=rsnapshot-discuss

--
David Cantrell | Hero of the Information Age

Human Rights left unattended may be removed,
destroyed, or damaged by the security services.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure
contains a definitive record of customers, application performance,
security threats, fraudulent activity, and more. Splunk takes this
data and makes sense of it. IT sense. And common sense.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-novd2d
_______________________________________________
rsnapshot-discuss mailing list
rsnapshot-discuss < at > lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rsnapshot-discuss