[ILUG] FOSS backup solutions

[FRLinux]

On 4/9/07, Cian Davis <davisc at skynet.ie> wrote:
> First off, is there any program that will look at your hard disk and
> figure out the best way to divide the FS into DVD sized chunks either
> with very standard compression (e.g. gzip) or not at all? Some logical
> way of dividing the FS would be helpful.

Hi Cian,

There are several backup programs out there depending on your needs.
There is the respectable amanda [1] which allows to backup on tapes.
In their new release (early 2007) they added full support to latest
GNU tar and OpenSSL and better remote authentication methods.

You could also use partimage [2] which is a direct clone of Norton
Ghost Image (at least a couple of years back when i was still using
Windows at home). Things I like about it : it writes only used data
from partitions, not the whole block, it supports PPC too which for me
is a plus and as indicated from the project page, you can use a liveCD
such as systemrescueCD (if you don't know it, burn it on a CD now,
it's a time saver) to restore data as well.

Now imagine you have a second linux box around or even a second PC
with some space available, you can use remote storage. This is where
rsnapshot comes in handy. It will backup your data nice and proper, it
is based on rsync and understands incremental backups.

[1] http://www.amanda.org/
[2] http://www.partimage.org
[3] http://www.rsnapshot.org/

> I'd really prefer not to have to use a backup program that requires
> the whole dataset to be reassembled before it's any use or use some
> custom archiving format, even if you can actually get at the files
> disc by disc.

rsync strikes here as a good candidate provided you know what you want
to restore, I use it on a regular basis and has proven really useful a
couple of times sparing me the painful reinstall process.

Steph