Best ways to backup your Gentoo systems

Message

netswig · Post by **netswig** » Mon Oct 15, 2012 10:10 pm

Just basically want some ways people backup there systems ?

Jaglover · Post by **Jaglover** » Mon Oct 15, 2012 11:10 pm

I do not back up the system. Just the user files and system conf.

pidsley · Post by **pidsley** » Tue Oct 16, 2012 12:10 am

Jaglover wrote:I do not back up the system. Just the user files and system conf.

This is also what I do. I use rsync to back up user files and some important config files, but don't try to back up the system.

The Doctor · Post by **The Doctor** » Tue Oct 16, 2012 12:32 am

I just backup my data and kernel .config and make.conf. Those are the 3 things that make my computer mine.

Post by **John R. Graham** » Tue Oct 16, 2012 12:46 am

My user files dominate the size of my backups, so a full system backup isn't a big deal. I back up everything. Monthly full plus nightly incrementals automatically to tape. I can reproduce the (nearly) exact state of my major development systems for any given day in the last 2 years. Outside of that window, I recycle tapes, preserving one full backup per year in perpetuity. I use app-backup/flexbackup.

- John

dmpogo · Post by **dmpogo** » Tue Oct 16, 2012 6:14 am

I use backuppc to backup my desktop, laptop and wife's macbook air. But I backup only /home and /etc

netswig · Post by **netswig** » Tue Oct 16, 2012 7:40 am

This is interesting.

I thought more people would backup their systems with some sort of 'bit copy' and create some sort of images.

GFCCAE6xF · Post by **GFCCAE6xF** » Tue Oct 16, 2012 9:41 am

I rsync sda1,3,4 all to a second drive in the machine and also once a week to an external drive.
This includes all of portage, distfiles, you name it.

If I screw up playing around it's very quick to boot up cd, mount and rsync it all back

b0nafide · Post by **b0nafide** » Tue Oct 16, 2012 3:15 pm

rsync +1

Goverp · Post by **Goverp** » Wed Oct 17, 2012 8:56 am

If you use ext2/3/4, you might like to try app-arch/dump. It's a command-line tool, also suitable for scripting. Seems fine to me, and when I tried a partial restore some time back, it worked well. I backup to a USB 1TB drive.

There's some old discussion about a note from Linus Torvalds saying he didn't recommend it, but if you read it carefully, IMHO it says he doesn't like running any backup within a running system, because you can't be sure of getting a consistent state if applications are running. I run dump after "rc single", which isn't quite as good as rebooting to a different OS and mounting all your target disks R/O, but I expect is good enough. Some day, probably when I next buy a new PC, I'll try a full system restore.

LiamOS · Post by **LiamOS** » Wed Oct 17, 2012 6:21 pm

It was a while ago, but I once did a
tar cfjv system.tar.bz2 / --exclude=/proc --exclude=/dev --exc...

I can't remember if that command is exactly the way, but I basically tarred everything and just extracted it later.
Worked fine.

Post by **John R. Graham** » Wed Oct 17, 2012 7:28 pm

I find I have a little more to say on this topic. The best way to back up your system is with some sort of formal backup program. These support some sort of efficient paradigm such as full plus incremental or differential and always support some sort of logging that helps you recover individual versions of lost files. There are lots of choices—a whole category in the Portage tree, in fact: app-backup. Just a few examples:

For large networks of machines, there's Amanda and Bacula.
For individual or smaller groups of machines there's backuppc.
Flexbackup is particularly friendly to tape, and I love tape. (Tape's the only cost-effective way to keep a really deep backup history and I find that professionally useful.)

rsync can be used by itself but you don't get the benefit of a history of perhaps multiple versions of your backed up files without a lot of script foo. That said, it's entirely possible to construct a good backup system that implements the traditional backup paradigms out of traditional *nix tools, but why bother? Others have already done this for you.

- John

Gentoo64 · Post by **Gentoo64** » Fri Oct 19, 2012 8:24 am

I use clonezilla it's fast and easy, does my whole drive in ~60 seconds

xenobyte · Post by **xenobyte** » Fri Oct 19, 2012 8:34 am

Gentoo64 wrote:I use clonezilla it's fast and easy, does my whole drive in ~60 seconds

Can confirm that. Works really great for me

forrestfunk81 · Post by **forrestfunk81** » Fri Oct 19, 2012 1:42 pm

I'm using rsnapshot. It is based on rsync can do multiple full and/or partial backups with hardlinks, network backups, is easy to setup and scriptable.

kimmie · Post by **kimmie** » Sat Oct 20, 2012 1:41 am

I use xfs for all filesystems, and xfsdump to back-up. It's fast, and I can tailor which directories/files get backed up using the chattr command.

Hypnos · Post by **Hypnos** » Sat Oct 20, 2012 6:25 am

I wrote a simple howto on rsnapshot which you may find useful.

dmpogo · Post by **dmpogo** » Sat Oct 20, 2012 6:40 am

John R. Graham wrote:I find I have a little more to say on this topic. The best way to back up your system is with some sort of formal backup program. These support some sort of efficient paradigm such as full plus incremental or differential and always support some sort of logging that helps you recover individual versions of lost files. There are lots of choices—a whole category in the Portage tree, in fact: app-backup. Just a few examples:
For large networks of machines, there's Amanda and Bacula.

For individual or smaller groups of machines there's backuppc.

Flexbackup is particularly friendly to tape, and I love tape. (Tape's the only cost-effective way to keep a really deep backup history and I find that professionally useful.)
rsync can be used by itself but you don't get the benefit of a history of perhaps multiple versions of your backed up files without a lot of script foo. That said, it's entirely possible to construct a good backup system that implements the traditional backup paradigms out of traditional *nix tools, but why bother? Others have already done this for you.

- John

I second that, and add rsnapshot to the list. It is important also to distinguish backup as a snapshot of a system, and backup as a history of revisions to the system (which
is traditionally meant as a proper backup). That is do you think you may need to recover a file deleted week ago, or what was done a year ago ? Or you just need to restore the system into the most recent state if the disk fails ?

JanErik · Post by **JanErik** » Sat Oct 20, 2012 6:48 am

I use rdiff-backup and rsync for /home, and periodically make a tarball of /.

d2_racing · Post by **d2_racing** » Sat Oct 20, 2012 11:43 am

Hi, I use rsync with the Btrfs subvolume power.

https://gentooquebec.org/gwiki/index.ph ... emRescueCD

ppurka · Post by **ppurka** » Sat Oct 20, 2012 12:06 pm

There is also the gentoo stage4method. Not sure if anyone uses it nowadays.

user · Post by **user** » Sat Oct 20, 2012 12:46 pm

my 2 steps:
1) rdiff-backup with include/exclude pattern to another disk
2) tar-ing with snapshot facility (full per month, snap per day), crypt and upload to several hosting services

losing disk or human error, step 1) recover
losing living home, step 2) recover from full+last snap upload

kriz · Post by **kriz** » Sat Oct 20, 2012 12:48 pm

Hypnos wrote:I wrote a simple howto on rsnapshot which you may find useful.

thx alot 4 this awesome howto.
i've taken the liberty to modify/currect the cron-jobs and monthly-script

Hypnos · Post by **Hypnos** » Sat Oct 20, 2012 1:04 pm

kriz wrote:thx alot 4 this awesome howto.

I'm glad to help -- for so many problems people have with Gentoo the easiest solution is "have backups."

i've taken the liberty to modify/currect the cron-jobs and monthly-script

Thanks for correcting the cron jobs -- they're correct on my machine, but I didn't copy and paste them properly on the howto!

As for the monthly config file, it's not necessary to exclude /dev, /proc and /sys if the "one_fs" flag is enabled.

kriz · Post by **kriz** » Sat Oct 20, 2012 1:21 pm

As for the monthly config file, it's not necessary to exclude /dev, /proc and /sys if the "one_fs" flag is enabled.

that explain a lot
have googled around and no, i haven't finish the hole entry

Q: Using rsnapshot 1.1.6, when I specify the root filesystem as a backup point, rsnapshot backs up each top level directory seperately. If I'm using one_fs, this makes it impossible to exclude things like the /proc filesystem.

This has been fixed in rsnapshot 1.2.0. You are encouraged to upgrade. Make sure to read the upgrade guide in the INSTALL file, included with the program. If you don't want to, or can't upgrade, read on for a workaround.