Re: [Fedora] semi-OT: easy backup solution for FC5

["Ashley M. Kirchner" <ashley@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Peter Horst wrote:
> Hi - I'm wondering if there is something in the Fedora/Linux world 
> comparable to the Windows-only Maxtor OneTouch external HD - i.e. a 
> more or less idiot-proof automatic (incremental) backup system.  Time 
> is tight right now, but I'm getting really paranoid not having my 
> ~100GB Fedora machine backed up.  Any recommendations?
> Thanks much -
   Well, not exactly like the OneTouch solution, but I can tell you 
what I do to backup 15 servers every night.  I have 1 dedicated machine 
that's the backup server.  It has a large RAID 5 setup in it for data 
storage.  All of the servers will run rsync every night and backup their 
data to the backup machine.  I use a system of hardlinks between backups 
which allows the snapshots to take little space (compared to the actual 
one) and it allows me to keep anywhere between 2 to 6 weeks worth of 
data that way.

   When looking at the backup folder for each server, you'll see a 
folder for each day, daily.01, daily,02, daily.nth.  The .01 is the full 
backup (and the largest folder).  The remaining ones are hardlinks to 
the previous one.  If a file gets removed from a server, it will get 
removed from that night's backup, but not from the previous nights.  So 
I can go back and recover it if needed.

   It is fully automated in that all I do is set the scripts and paths, 
create a crontab and I forget about it.  once a week I will log onto the 
backup server and check the backups, make sure they're still working and 
that the RAID is healthy.  That's it.  No hassles, no manual triggering, 
nothing.  Just set and forget,