replicating a live directory

[Joao Miguel Ferreira]

Hello all,

we are using rsync to produce a replica of our filesystem.

it's very important for us to be sure that the files replicated on the
remote backup host are left in a consistent state as we may need to boot
services from those files (configs, logs, etc)!

right now we use a 'greedy approach'... we stop all important services
(dhcpd, squid, sendmail, etc) just to minimize the possibility of copying to
the backup a file that was being written.

Could we be over doing it ? Are we exagerating ?

An example: if we do not stop sendmail were rsync'ing can we be sure that
the queues on the replica machine are in a consisten state ?

same for dhcpd leases or squid's cache ?

We would really like to leave all those important services up but we are
really affraid of producing a corrupted replica...

can anyone comment on this ? is rsync imune to this kind of problem ?

thank you very much.

Joao
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