Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2009 02:42:43 -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: <4AD6C463.40307@ibctech.ca> In-Reply-To: <560f92640910142042tc46f1e3lb81ac1e4528a44ab@mail.gmail.com> References: <560f92640910142042tc46f1e3lb81ac1e4528a44ab@mail.gmail.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
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). ...but you've found recently that it isn't scalable. > 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. ...quick hack, tested example ( recommended for a quick fix only. do a proper archive ) %pwd /home/steve %mkdir arch && ls | grep arch arch %echo "blah, blah" >> arch/file.txt %cat !$ cat arch/file.txt blah, blah # now, even though this is a ~ example, I use / all the time... tarball /home/steve/arch directory ( and contents ) to a different server: %tar -cvzf - arch | ssh steve@amanda.eagle.ca ' cat > arch_test.tar.gz' a arch a arch/file.txt ... after key-auth ( or password auth ) to remote SSH server, on the remote server: %pwd /usr/home/steve %ll | grep arch -rw-r--r-- 1 steve steve 10240 Oct 15 02:16 arch_test.tar.gz %pwd /usr/home/steve %mkdir restore-test %mv arch_test.tar.gz restore-test/ %cd !$ cd restore-test/ %tar -xzvf arch_test.tar.gz x arch/ x arch/file.txt %cd arch %ll total 1 -rw-r--r-- 1 steve steve 11 Oct 15 02:17 file.txt ... booya, restored, on a remote server...look: %cat file.txt blah, blah ...Just like that! If I've missed something, forgive me. I swear that doing a 'backup' to a remote location with a FreeBSD box is honestly *nearly* as easy to this Canadian as packing snow into an iceball to hit the bus with ;) Steve
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?4AD6C463.40307>