Comments on: Backubuntu

Question: Backubuntu

tmcw — Sun, 18 May 2008 15:32:24 -0800

What's the best backup solution for (Ubuntu) Linux? I need a backup as complete as possible of a home directory of ~10+ GB, nightly, etc. I have two large external USB 2.0 drives for the purpose...

I know some of the options (which I'll list out), but I'm wondering which is the community favorite / most popular / most reliable / most likely to be maintained.

What I've considered: flyback, rsync, rdiff, rsnapshot, timevault, unison...

Thanks! I've gone too long without good backups, and my home directory is becoming more and more valuable. Oh, and it absolutely must backup hidden directories, although I would guess that's standard (a lot of my data is SVN repos). Something that could back up various other files (my apache configs, site-applications, etc files are fairly vital). Maybe a separate system that would do basically a drive image on a less frequent basis?

Thanks!

By: nicwolff

nicwolff — Sun, 18 May 2008 15:53:34 -0800

I use rsnapshot over SSH to (well, technically "from") a server in Denmark (gotta be ready for that hemisphere-destroying meteor strike!), but I'm starting to think about just using git - have you considered just scripting nightly SVN commits to a couple of tracking repositories?

By: quarterframer

quarterframer — Sun, 18 May 2008 15:58:52 -0800

Grsync is a really nice GUI for rsync. It's available in the Ubuntu repositories. I use it to keep a mirror of /home including hidden files. It's highly configurable (permissions, keep or delete deleted files, compress on destination, etc.). Like anything rsync, it will take awhile the first time but after that it just finds changes and is superduper speedy and reliable.

By: the dief

the dief — Sun, 18 May 2008 16:57:12 -0800

Seconding git. I use it for some backups, and it's so awesome it's scary. It's got a bit of a learning curve but it's so worth it.

Here's a good introduction to git.

By: PueExMachina

PueExMachina — Sun, 18 May 2008 17:10:30 -0800

So you want to keep multiple copies of the backups so that you can refer to old revisions of files? I've used rsnapshot to do exactly this. It's in the Ubuntu repositories and well-documented. rdiff-backup will require less storage to store the changes, but you won't be able to easily browse all the old files.

I use unison as well, but it's two-way synchronization capabilities aren't needed for backups.

By: hattifattener

hattifattener — Sun, 18 May 2008 18:00:42 -0800

Duplicity looks nice, and next time I set up backups somewhere I intend to try it out. My current tool is flexbackup ("for when amanda is too much and tarring things up by hand is not enough"), whose main selling point (to me) is ease of configuration and use.

I've been backing up to an rsync.net account and I've been quite pleased with them.

By: tmcw

tmcw — Sun, 18 May 2008 19:44:54 -0800

So far.. errors.

rsnapshot tries to chown files. It's a FAT32 filesystem. Hence, no.

flyback errors on start and crashes on backing up.

git is some good kool-aid, but for local files? I'm not sure what the best technique would be

TimeVault does not play well with removable media

rsync (just bare, with the options jwz recommends) is running currently and seems to be doin' it, but it's running into the same chown / chgrp errors as rsnapshot. Not sure which road to take here, since having the disks accessible to XP/OSX is kind of essential as well.

By: trouserbat

trouserbat — Sun, 18 May 2008 19:54:58 -0800

I wholeheartedly recommend rsync. A big part of rsync is that, for your home dir of 10+ GB, it will only actually need to update stuff that changes on a day-to-day basis (after the first backup). Sounds like that's what you want.

I use monotone, a distributed version control program, for stuff I want to keep under version tracking (config files, my source code and scripts, anything hand-written instead of generated.). Looks like other people have recommended git for the same purposes, and I hear good stuff about mercurial, but I prefer monotone -- they're all quite good though.

I use rsync for everything else (including my music collection). VC and rsync also complement each other ("keep track of the changes I make to these things in minute detail, and try to keep this other stuff backed up too"). (This is between my desktop and laptop, copied remotely via ssh to my web server.)

By: trouserbat

trouserbat — Sun, 18 May 2008 20:00:03 -0800

> It's a FAT32 filesystem. Hence, no.
You probably want to run a native filesystem for backups, particularly if you've got "two large external USB 2.0 drives for the purpose". The filesystem journaling, etc., will be helpful.

And while I couldn't cite this if pressed, to my understanding, git development hasn't placed much priority on being Windows-portable. I've heard (similarly secondhand) that rsync is fine on Windows, though as always you will probably need to double-check the settings. Best of luck.

By: tmcw

tmcw — Sun, 18 May 2008 20:15:46 -0800

Point taken. I'll format one of the drives to test. ext3, I guess? (prays that this doesn't brick the drive.)

By: dixie flatline

dixie flatline — Mon, 19 May 2008 02:31:55 -0800

I use rdiff-backup. Its method of generating actual incremental snapshots just seems better to me than the rsnapshot technique of just hard-linking everything together. It also keeps a separate copy of the metadata (permissions, etc.), so I think it would even work on a FAT32 target, although I haven't tried it.

At my current rate, after excluding a few unnecessary directories like the Firefox cache, I'll probably be able to go a couple months at least without having to expire the old snapshots, which could be pretty useful at some point.

rdiff-backup also does a good job of handling large files that don't change much. e.g., I have a VirtualBox disk image that is about 3 gigs, but rdiff-backup will figure out if only 10 megs have changed since the last backup.

By: tmcw

tmcw — Mon, 19 May 2008 14:56:46 -0800

ext3 formatted, now I've got fairly minor mounting & unmounting tweaks. flyback works sorta.