[clug] Linux Backups: dump vs ...

Paul Wayper paulway at mabula.net
Thu Apr 21 12:44:12 GMT 2005


At 03:43 PM 20/04/2005, you wrote:
>Generally for backups, even on failing (read: seconds from death)
>hardware, I've found tar and gzip/bzip2 (Even on one occasion piping
>directly to mkisofs to cdrecord, back in the days when cdrecord was free
>and I had a real SCSI burner) to be most reliable and effective.
>
>I never trusted ufsdump on Solaris x86 either, though.

I had lots of success with using ufsdump on Solaris Sparc, but x86 may be 
broken.  It still doesn't give you any more than what you get out of tar 
and the optional compression program of your choice.

Given the decreasing cost of hard disk space, using rsync may be a far 
better way even if your 'backup' is relatively local.  You also get a 
complete working file system which, with a bit of jiggery-pokery, you can 
chroot to and use as a working image of your entire system (in case there 
was some specific program that you needed to play with in your work system 
that expects to be somewhere or use libraries somewhere specific.)

Everyone should go out and find a friend who lives on a relatively similar 
internet link to you.  You each back up your system to a disk and swap 
disks.  Install your friend's disk in your system.  Let them rsync to it 
over the wire.  Then everyone will actually have working backups, instead 
of pretending to do them.  When your house burns down (and mine did once), 
it's too late to say "well, I was meaning to do backups."

Have fun,

Paul

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