From owner-freebsd-chat Sat Apr 14 15:37:40 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from newgold.net (durham0-128.dsl.gtei.net [4.3.0.128]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id A045D37B618 for ; Sat, 14 Apr 2001 15:37:36 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jmallett@newgold.net) Received: (qmail 21044 invoked by uid 1000); 14 Apr 2001 22:37:14 -0000 Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2001 18:37:14 -0400 (EDT) From: Joseph Mallett To: Sue Blake Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: saving configs [was: MUA's seen in the lists] In-Reply-To: <20010415083855.Y4964@welearn.com.au> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org I do. I have a job cronned to tar up /etc and /var daily, not only that but it copies it to two seperate partitions (in case I accidentally rm a directory) and it's small enough for a floppy, but I usually just scp all the files (they're datestamped, so I don't just have _one_ file) to a seperate server. /joseph -- Joseph Mallett Security Specialist jmallett@newgold.net www.newgold.net irc.newgold.net/#xMach xMach Core Team jmallett@xMach.org www.xMach.org On Sun, 15 Apr 2001, Sue Blake wrote: > On Sat, Apr 14, 2001 at 04:42:23PM -0400, Joseph Mallett wrote: > > > > Imagine having to do this to back up configuration: > > find / -name '*.conf' -exec cp {} /backup/ ';' > > And then imagine restoring everything to its proper home. > > And then imagine all the files you missed because application X decided it > > didn't want to name its files with .conf, X11 comes to mind. > > That'd be pretty futile. I run a script from cron that archives all of > the important config files, plus a few reports and a listing of the > contents of those archives showing the original paths. This can run > daily 12 hours from backup time, or occasionally for a static home machine. > > It is NOT a substitute for backing up, but a more quickly accessed copy > of the files for a quick restore if one of them gets hosed. (Ever had a > server down while someone farts around with a tape to restore a 2k > file? Broke your fstab or password file at 5pm, or lost today's new > virtual domains setups? Discovered that the assistants haven't been > using RCS like they promised?) It's a wonderful resource if you ever > want to build the whole machine from scratch, e.g. on new hardware with > a very different version of FreeBSD plus a good dose of hindsight. You > know that all the info you need is in there, except the actual data -- > no searching or head-scratching required. > > These archives fit onto one floppy disk (two for the slow 386 where I > want the current built kernel as well). I use zip and put them on > DOS-formatted floppies, so that individual files can be extracted, > viewed, printed, copied to another floppy, from almost any old > Macintosh, OS/2, VMS, Unix, DOS, or even MS-Widows machine. For a > simple setup you can just copy the files and still fit them all on a > floppy. > > They are easy to transport off site (a quick scp to somewhere secure, > or mail two disks in a regular envelope) and are so easy to make you'll > have enough not to worry about unreliability of the media. Store one > diskette every month or two for a compact history of the machine's configs. > > I'm surprised that others don't do something similar. > > -- > > Regards, > -*Sue*- > > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message