[clug] Story: Fijian Resort complex loses a single disk: business process stops for 1-2 days

[Scott Ferguson]

On 28/07/14 12:11, Alex Satrapa wrote:
> On 25 Jul 2014, at 23:18 , Hal Ashburner <hal at ashburner.info> wrote:
> 
>> Does anyone follow anything like the jwz prescription?
>> http://www.jwz.org/doc/backups.html
> 
> Time Machine does basically the same thing as jwz’s recipe, though it
> adds hourly backups in separate directory trees
> (…/Backups.backupdb/Host Name/datetime/«remainder of path»), and
> includes a convenient interface for recovering files from backups
> too.
> 
> An rsync recipe is here:
> http://blog.interlinked.org/tutorials/rsync_time_machine.html
> 
> So use the command: sudo rsync -vaxAX --delete --ignore-errors
> —link-dest=/Volumes/Backup/current / /Volumes/Backup/$date
> 
> or to modify the “rsync time machine” script:
> 
>> #!/bin/sh date=`date "+%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S"` rsync -vaxzAXP
>> --link-dest=PATHTOBACKUP/current $SOURCE
>> $HOST:PATHTOBACKUP/back-$date ssh $HOST "rm -f PATHTOBACKUP/current
>> && ln -s back-$date PATHTOBACKUP/current"
> 
> 
> Remember to use -H if you are in the habit of hard-linking large
> files to save space.
> 
> And remember to actually rotate your on-site and off-site backups on
> a more frequent basis than once a month. Once a week is a great start
> :)
> 
> Alex
> 


Perhaps rsync -avxPHAXS --delete might be more useful, in some cases,
particularly if you wish to test for errors. I note the verbose is left
out of the script - perhaps the script would be improved if it wasn't
and was used for error checking.
Add checksums (-c) if io bandwidth is not a problem. (it can be nice'd
if it is, and --delay-updates can by useful).

Suggestion - use email to confirm a successful backup (zero errors)
	$ echo $Success | mail user at fqd -s "Backup $Timestring succeeded"
Use a filter to check for that email
Use a cron/anacron event to check for the filter event
Create an SMS alert if that event *failed* to occur, (which would
indicate that in *any* way the backup was not successful) one way is
googlecl, with your calendars set to send SMS for new events
	$ google calendar add "Backup $Timestring error"



Kind regards