Jim Douglas wrote:
> Can anyone suggest the best wat to backup my Fedora Server?
>
> I have about 8GB being used.
>
> A simple, cheap backup/restore solution in case my hard drive failes.
Firstly, you need to ask yourself a few questions.
Do you have any databases running on the server? Most databases need to
be stopped, have database-specific backup commands run, or have some
sort of "snapshot" functionality, or otherwise the backups won't be
consistent.
Do you want to worry about fire / theft? If so, you need to keep the
backup "off-site", and realistically have at least two backup media. So,
for example, if you're copying to a USB disk, you ought to have two USB
disks, so that you never have to have them all in the same place.
Do you want to consider failure of the hard drive *while* you're backing
up? In that case, the backup you're making won't be good, so you'd
better have a good, older backup somewhere.
Do you want to keep older backups around? (You'd be surprised how many
people ask for a copy of the Most Important Document they were working
on last July, that they "must have deleted by accident in September --
or would it have been August?")
How much changes on the server each day? Do you have a "remote" computer
somewhere else you can use? Do they both have fast Internet connections?
You might find that a combination of ssh and rsync with the --backup and
--backup-dir options gives you something that is totally automatic once
set up, and so can be run multiple times a day.
What *sort* of data do you have? Does it include a Fedora install? Does
it include yum cache (you almost certainly won't want to back that up).
Is there a lot of compressed graphics, music or video (those won't
compress).
How long can you afford to be down? Is "re-install Fedora from DVD or
CD" a viable first step? If so, you don't need to backup /usr (except
possibly /usr/local) and a number of other directories, which can save a
*lot* of time and disk space. You'd also end up with a clean install of
Fedora, which might be a Good Thing.
How quickly will the amount of data grow? Will you be able to "archive"
data to a few Known Good Copies and then ignore them when making
backups?
If you want a quick restore, then you'd better be taking One Big
Filesystem Image, probably to a USB hard disk. If you can get away
without backing up everything every time, *and* if you have spare disk
space to take compressed tar files of valuable filesystems, you might
get away with using DVD±RW. Or you could use the new dual-layer DVD±Rs.
(Don't try copying files directly to FAT32 or DVD: tar them first.
Otherwise you'll lose ownership and permissions data.)
You should at least be looking to backup /root, /etc, /home, some
stuff under /var (e.g. /var/log/rpmpkgs), /srv if you use it...
Personally, I have a simple shell script to tar and gzip certain
directories and burn those archives to DVD+RW. But then, if I ever
wanted to reinstall the machine, I'd want to do things differently.
Whatever you do, test the re-install...
James.
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E-mail address: james | Ankh-Morpork people considered that spelling was a
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| -- "The Truth", Terry Pratchett
