Date: Wed, 16 May 2007 22:55:04 +0200 From: Roland Smith <rsmith@xs4all.nl> To: Paul Schmehl <pauls@utdallas.edu>, FreeBSD Questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Best remote backup method? Message-ID: <20070516205504.GD97410@slackbox.xs4all.nl> In-Reply-To: <20070516202735.GB97410@slackbox.xs4all.nl> References: <437646E3279CED649940FB48@utd59514.utdallas.edu> <20070516202735.GB97410@slackbox.xs4all.nl>
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On Wed, May 16, 2007 at 10:27:35PM +0200, Roland Smith wrote:
> On Wed, May 16, 2007 at 01:38:13PM -0500, Paul Schmehl wrote:
> > I'm presently backing up two servers in a remote location to a usb dri=
ve=20
> > located elsewhere by using rsync over ssh (all three are FreeBSD boxes=
=2E)=20
> > After the recent discussion about dump, I'm wondering if I would gain=
=20
> > anything by using dump rather than rsync. Has anyone used both? Any=
=20
> > thoughts as to which is "better" and why?
> >=20
> > The rsync command I use is:
> > rsync -avz ${LOCALDIR} -e "ssh -i ${KEY}" ${REMOTEHOST}:${REMOTEDIR}
>=20
> With dumps it is easier to keep different ones around. If you rsync a
> directory, all previous changes are lost. If you rsync to a different
> directory every time to keep different versions, you might as well use
> tar, because rsync won't save a lot of space/time in that case. And dump
> will backup all ufs2 features such as flags and acls. I'm not sure if
> rsync can manage that. It's also easy to compress dumps, which can save
> a lot of space.
>=20
> But if you need to lift a single file from a backup, it might be easier
> with rsync, although dump has an interactive mode to select stuff to
> restore as well.
>=20
> A compelling reason to use rsync would be if the file system that is to
> be backed up is so large that more than one backup won't fit on your
> backup disk anyway. In that case rsync can save you a lot of time.
And, if you _really_ screw things up, like 'rm -rf foo *'
instead of 'rm -rf foo*' from /usr/bin, bunzip2 and restore are right there
in /rescue, while rsync isn't. And getting rsync to work when /usr/bin is
hosed is quite a lot of work (no compiler etc).
And yes, these things happen (speaking from personal experience). :-(
So making backups with something that is available in /rescue or on the
boot CD is definitely a huge plus. Because if you need those backups,
chances are you need them badly.
Roland
--=20
R.F.Smith http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
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