Simplest script to backup many Linux servers

Kerry Cox kerry.cox at ksl.com
Wed Mar 13 10:45:51 EST 2002


Okay, I've been lurking on this list for several weeks and have finally
gotten rsync to work well when transferring files from one box to
another. It is really great for passing lots of files from one machine
to another, i.e. ripped MP3 to my home Linux machine, as one example.
Now I am ready to take the next big step. 
I have a large 1.5 terabyte server from Raidzone that I have NFS mounted
on my main backup Linux machine. The backup machine is running Red Hat
7.2 with the latest rsync RPM version they recommend, rsync-2.4.6-10. 
Normally, I use dump/restore to backup all 30+ Linux machines here to
tape. I'd rather use rsync to move everything or just the important
files on each server to the mounted Raidbackup machine.
My questions is, what is the best way to do this? or what would be the
simplest script. I tried the following script; 

# Backup all partitions and files 
#!/bin/sh
rsync -av * 192.168.10.10:/export3/mailworks.ksl.com/

but it seems to hang quite a bit as it generates the necessary list. I
have created directories for each server name in the /export3/ directory
and to a limited extent it works. But it seems to require some more
tweaking and I'm rather at a loss.
I can backup the contents of an individual user's directory with no
problem, but I'd like to back it all up or rather mirror the entire
machine on the raidzone backup box.
Here is how I have it mounted.

[root at backup mailworks.ksl.com]# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
64.147.130.xx:/home/ksl
                      1.2T  1.1G  1.1T   1% /export3

Can anyone suggest a better script for copying things over? or for
improving my method of running rsync?
Thanks much.
Kerry




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