From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Apr 26 21:13:31 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DC6BD106566C for ; Sat, 26 Apr 2008 21:13:31 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from andrew@qemg.org) Received: from post.queensu.ca (post.QueensU.CA [130.15.126.6]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A2F208FC1B for ; Sat, 26 Apr 2008 21:13:31 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from andrew@qemg.org) Received: from U48.N136.QueensU.CA (U48.N136.QueensU.CA [130.15.136.48]) by post.queensu.ca (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id m3QLDNof018974; Sat, 26 Apr 2008 17:13:23 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2008 18:13:26 -0300 (ADT) From: "A. Hamilton-Wright" To: Jeffrey Goldberg In-Reply-To: <31702B1B-03EF-4505-8BDF-D82A90C865ED@goldmark.org> Message-ID: References: <31702B1B-03EF-4505-8BDF-D82A90C865ED@goldmark.org> User-Agent: Alpine 1.10 (BSF 962 2008-03-14) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Cc: FreeBSD List Subject: Re: USB HD based backup schemes X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2008 21:13:32 -0000 You haven't mentioned how large a USB drive you have available to use for this scheme, but it sounds to me like your situation can be summed up as follows: - you have two machines to back up, one is remote, but both have consistent network accessibility - you have a (removable) drive upon which you want to place regular backups, based on some use of dump/restore, and presumably this drive is large enough for all backup data, to be managed under some rotation scheme (old -vs- current directories, for example) - the main question is how to collect and organize the data onto this (removable) drive on a machine remote from the one being backed up If the above pretty much fits the bill, I would suggest a simple script to be run out of cron to copy the data. Keep in mind that you can easily transfer the data directly from dump to your remote machine by piping it into an ssh command. On your dobby machine, a command of the form: dump 1nuLf - /my/data | ssh -x kreacher /path/to/some/handler/script will present the dump output to a script run on the backup machine that can presumably ensure sane handling of the incoming data and potentially mount your USB device. Passing the mount point on dobby as an argument to your remote script will help you organize things if you have set up multiple filesystems on dobby that you need to dump separately. Note that I am assuming here that you have made a zero level dump and that it will be perpetually available in some safe place. > I'm sure that I could roll my own with dump or such, but I'm sure that I > would leave important things out and that this has already been done by > people who are smarter and more experienced than I am. So recommendations > please. As long as you are dumping whole filesystems, I don't really see how you can "leave anything out" -- recovery is then simply a case of: - boot off an install/live CD - fdisk, label, newfs - restore dump level 0, restore most recent dump level 1