Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2009 01:40:44 -0400 From: Steve Bertrand <steve@ibctech.ca> To: Nerius Landys <nlandys@gmail.com> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Best procedure for full backup of live system Message-ID: <4AD6B5DC.9010407@ibctech.ca> In-Reply-To: <560f92640910142042tc46f1e3lb81ac1e4528a44ab@mail.gmail.com> References: <560f92640910142042tc46f1e3lb81ac1e4528a44ab@mail.gmail.com>
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Nerius Landys wrote: > My server is increasingly having important work stored on it, and I > need to start taking backups of a lot of directories, especially > /home, /opt, /etc, /usr/local/etc, and maybe others. The ideal backup > (and what I've done in the past) is to take a full low-level dd image > of the disk while the system is down (this is easy to do in a > situation where you have dual boot). Or, since the output of dd would > take up tons of space and would only be usable on an identical hard > drive, use "dump" to take the backup while the machine is turned off > (again easy to do on a dual boot). But now, I cannot bring down the > machine. My plan is to do a tar gzip of / on the fly, and pipe that > to ssh (remote machine). However, the system is live, and files will > be in the progress of changing. > > My question is, what is the recommended procedure of taking a full > backup on a live system? Ideally, if my hard drive were to crash, I > would like to have such a backup so as to make it possible to copy > over the entire backup to a new identical harddrive without doing any > reinstall or configuration. Should I use tar/gzip? dump? What exact > command should I use? I guess I'll back up all of / including system > files, because there is not too much data. I will be piping the > output to ssh. Always consider, document and thoroughly test-utilize anything that 'Warren Block' has to say about backup and archiving ( search the archives for his name ). *always* remember that _archive_ is not a _backup_. *always* remember that if you have neither an archive or a backup, you are a complete failure as an 'admin' in general. *never* be responsible for losing data...EVER. I like to use space on remote servers ( or oftentimes local disks ) as clone-able space. To manufacture a live clone, I love rsync(1). Without getting into the nitty-gritty ( ( proper db mgmt pausing etc ), Here is a q&d example to get the blood flowing.. comment the first line...legal..blah etc ): # rsync -arcvv \ # be very verbose --exclude=/backup \ # ignore our backup location --exclude=/tmp \ # ignore sessions, etc --delete-after \ # delete changes since last rsync / \ # sync this.... /backup # ...to this... Steve
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