Backup recommendation
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From: Martin Gregorie on 19 Dec 2008 14:38 On Fri, 19 Dec 2008 15:56:32 +0000, Ian Rawlings wrote: > Yes I did wonder about that. Mind you, with your system if you do get > an error then you can lose the entire backup rather than just one file, > and I'm told (but have never tested it) that with uncorrectable bit > error rates, and the amount of bits on a disc these days, you've got > about a 50% chance of being able to read an entire disc without finding > at least one error. > I've used it for recovery once or twice, both for getting fingertroubled files back and for retrieving complete partitions when disks died. So far I haven't found any read errors. The odds are that, if I did I could go back 24 hours the the previous backup without losing very much. > I do exactly the same with my systems, a script that mounts /boot and an > exclude list that includes /proc/, /tmp/ and a few others, although I do > include /dev now as one of the restores I did came up with "can't access > /dev/console" and died, requiring a bit of furtlingrtroubled > I probably back up a bit much stuff, because my usual recovery is to first reinstall the distro from the DVD and then to replace stuff from the backup (/home - because of the way I use symlinks this also implies / usr/local and /var/www - and the rest of /var that got backed up). Then I use the user maintenance tool to get names back on uid and gid and finally restore my customised config file from CVS. The CVS repository is in /home. I take the approach that I'd rather back up too much and not need it than back up too little and end up swearing. > On my laptop I rsync the encrypted filesystem across unencrypted to a > server. As part of the F10 upgrade early next year I'm planning to add a small encrypted partition for the small amount of sensitive stuff I keep. I haven't worked out how I'll back that up yet. -- martin@ | Martin Gregorie gregorie. | Essex, UK org |
From: Ian Rawlings on 19 Dec 2008 17:58 On 2008-12-19, Martin Gregorie <martin(a)see.sig.for.address.invalid> wrote: > I probably back up a bit much stuff, because my usual recovery is to > first reinstall the distro from the DVD and then to replace stuff from > the backup Hmm, if you're backing up the entire disc, then there's no real need to re-install a distro then do a restore to that machine, all I do is to boot a live CD, partition and format the disc, run rsync to copy the backup across, then run grub-install to set up the boot loader and it's back up again. With a bit of furtling with the kernel, I can even get restores to work across different machines, e.g. recently I had a laptop die and did a restore to a desktop machine and really only needed to change the X configuration and the wireless network card driver, everything else happened automatically despite the backup source being a Lenovo laptop and the destination being a Compaq desktop. > As part of the F10 upgrade early next year I'm planning to add a small > encrypted partition for the small amount of sensitive stuff I keep. I > haven't worked out how I'll back that up yet. I use LUKS to do the encryption, and when backing up, I just back up unencrypted as the encryption is only to protect the laptop in case I lose it or get it stolen. If you want to create encrypted backups, one solution I might be looking at (as I will need to do the same at some point) is to rsync across to a LUKS encrypted filesystem on another machine, I will probably create one in a file on a standard ext3 filesystem, I believe that can be done quite easily. -- Blast off and strike the evil Bydo empire! http://youtube.com/user/tarcus69 http://www.flickr.com/photos/tarcus/sets/
From: Martin Gregorie on 19 Dec 2008 18:31 On Fri, 19 Dec 2008 22:58:55 +0000, Ian Rawlings wrote: > On 2008-12-19, Martin Gregorie <martin(a)see.sig.for.address.invalid> > wrote: > >> As part of the F10 upgrade early next year I'm planning to add a small >> encrypted partition for the small amount of sensitive stuff I keep. I >> haven't worked out how I'll back that up yet. > > I use LUKS to do the encryption, and when backing up, I just back up > unencrypted as the encryption is only to protect the laptop in case I > lose it or get it stolen. If you want to create encrypted backups, one > solution I might be looking at (as I will need to do the same at some > point) is to rsync across to a LUKS encrypted filesystem on another > machine, I will probably create one in a file on a standard ext3 > filesystem, I believe that can be done quite easily. > To be honest, I'm not sure what the best approach is. I have a number of small HTML pages containing various online account/password combos. These are part of a website on my LAN, and are lightly secured with the Apache password by putting them in a separate directory with an .htaccess file. I'd like to encrypt the online account/password pairs, and maybe a bit more data as well, in such a way that it remains encrypted on backups. My first idea was to mount an encoded partition on this directory. However, there's probably a better way to do it. As I already have a PostgresQL server on the box, would it be better to store encrypted data in that? It doesn't matter if the safe store mechanism is somewhat overkill provided I learn something new from implementing it. -- martin@ | Martin Gregorie gregorie. | Essex, UK org |
From: Ian Rawlings on 19 Dec 2008 18:54 On 2008-12-19, Martin Gregorie <martin(a)see.sig.for.address.invalid> wrote: > My first idea was to mount an encoded partition on this directory. > However, there's probably a better way to do it. As I already have a > PostgresQL server on the box, would it be better to store encrypted data > in that? It doesn't matter if the safe store mechanism is somewhat > overkill provided I learn something new from implementing it. That's down to what you have a pressing need for I suppose, either storing encrypted data in a database or running an encrypted filesytem! If you have a linux laptop then I'd be tempted to pursue LUKS first and move the laptop across to it (not hard to do) as the risk of losing the laptop or it getting stolen can be high and the consequences dire so that would be a useful driver for the pretty short learning curve involved. -- Blast off and strike the evil Bydo empire! http://youtube.com/user/tarcus69 http://www.flickr.com/photos/tarcus/sets/
From: Dave Liquorice on 19 Dec 2008 18:55
On Fri, 19 Dec 2008 17:57:01 +0000, Ian Rawlings wrote: > Certainly, but there are people taking hints from this thread so best > watch ourselves ;-) Aye, I'm going to play with rsync on my OS/2 workstation machine as a backup system to my home directory on the server. I had been toying with trying to use xcopy or something but rsync looks to be just the job with a REXX script to control it. -- Cheers Dave. |