Backup solution

[Ali AlipourR]

Hi
I'm new to Linux and unix-like systems, I need some advice on backup
solution for file level and block level backups

for file-level backups I found fsarchiver, dar, tar and for
file-system-level fsarchiver, clonezilla/partclone and dd appropriate
based on my requirements
(data integrity and confidentiality, mount and single-file-restoration
capabilities, btrfs and GPT support, ACL/Selinux preservation, xz
compression)

Advantage of tar and dd is that they are available every where but I'm
mostly concerned about file integrity with tar
and dd copies all unused blocks of file system too (fsarchiver or
clonezilla/partclone will only copy file-system + MBR)

I need some advice on Backup solutions, what is your personal methods
and solutions?
Any advice would be most welcome

Thanks

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Tue, 2014-12-02 at 18:24 +0100, Heinz Diehl wrote:
>  On 02.12.2014, Ali AlipourR wrote: 
>  
>  > I need some advice on Backup solutions, what is your personal methods
>  > and solutions?
>  
>  rsync -avxHSAX /source/ /target
>  
>  You can even use it to move a complete installation to another disk,
>  just exchange source with target. It's fast, easy and reliable. 
yum install rsnapshot

Does all the above but is designed to run regularly from cron and keep
backups at daily, weekly and monthly intervals (which obviously you can
change). Backup generations use hard links where possible to save space.

poc

[Matthew Miller]

On Tue, Dec 02, 2014 at 06:30:02PM +0100, Heinz Diehl wrote:
>  > It doesn't, however, do compression or encryption.
>  If the data is important (why make a backup otherwise?), this is a bad
>  idea. One single bit flip can render your whole archive/backup useless
>  (unless you have some par2 checksums for it, which isn't a 100%
>  guarantee either). And big harddisk are not that expensive nowadays.. 
I assume the encryption is a bigger deal, and if you're doing that,
might as well compress. Makes room for your par2s. :)

-- 
Matthew Miller
<mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org&gt;
Fedora Project Leader

[poma]

man 1 cp

[Matthew Miller]

On Tue, Dec 02, 2014 at 04:13:19PM +0330, Ali AlipourR wrote:
>  I'm new to Linux and unix-like systems, I need some advice on
> backup
>  solution for file level and block level backups 
Hi Ali. Please don't cross-post to all of these lists for user
questions. The server, cloud, and desktop sig mailing lists are primarily for
development of Fedora in those areas. I'm going to remove those from
the list and reply just on the users list, which is an appropriate
place for this.

-- 
Matthew Miller
<mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org&gt;
Fedora Project Leader

[Matthew Miller]

On Tue, Dec 02, 2014 at 04:13:19PM +0330, Ali AlipourR wrote:
>  for file-level backups I found fsarchiver, dar, tar and for
>  file-system-level fsarchiver, clonezilla/partclone and dd appropriate
>  based on my requirements
>  (data integrity and confidentiality, mount and single-file-restoration
>  capabilities, btrfs and GPT support, ACL/Selinux preservation, xz
>  compression) 
You may also find rdiff-backup to be useful. It can verify data
integrity (although not repair), will preserve permissions and extended
attributes. I like it particularly because the latest backup is a
straightforward mirror, making data recovery trivial. It doesn't,
however, do compression or encryption.

>  Advantage of tar and dd is that they are available every where but
> I'm
>  mostly concerned about file integrity with tar
>  and dd copies all unused blocks of file system too (fsarchiver or
>  clonezilla/partclone will only copy file-system + MBR) 
One option for data integrity is to use par2create to make recovery
blocks to store alongside your tar files.


-- 
Matthew Miller
<mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org&gt;
Fedora Project Leader

[Derrik Walker v2.0]

On 12/2/14, 7:43, Ali AlipourR wrote:
>  I need some advice on Backup solutions, what is your personal
> methods
>  and solutions?
>  Any advice would be most welcome 
I use BackupPC. It's served me very well for
years, and can backup just 
about anything.

- Derrik

[Heinz Diehl]

On 02.12.2014, Matthew Miller wrote: 

>  It doesn't, however, do compression or encryption. 
If the data is important (why make a backup otherwise?), this is a bad
idea. One single bit flip can render your whole archive/backup useless
(unless you have some par2 checksums for it, which isn't a 100%
guarantee either). And big harddisk are not that expensive nowadays..

[Heinz Diehl]

On 02.12.2014, Ali AlipourR wrote: 

>  I need some advice on Backup solutions, what is your personal
> methods
>  and solutions? 
rsync -avxHSAX /source/ /target

You can even use it to move a complete installation to another disk,
just exchange source with target. It's fast, easy and reliable.

[Ali AlipourR]

I have another solution in my mind:

a-formating my backup storage with file system (btrfs/ext4/whatever)
and mounting it as backup destination
b-making a sparse file in it with truncate(1)
c-formating sparse file with btrfs to be used as "archive file system"
(with compression, checksumming, trim enabled)
d-mounting sparse file and rsync my data to it (rsync will preserve
ACLs/xattrs) then unmount "archive file system"
e-unmount underlying file system of backup storage destination

I tested it out and it works
In the case you modified the "archive file system" and you want to
trim it and re-punch holes in it you can:
a-mount it, fstrim it, unmount it
b-dd if=sparse_file of=new_sparse_file conv=sparse
c-mount it, fstrim it again(not sure why, but it my test it is
needed!?), unmount it

do this method is safe? do it has any draw backs?
again, Any advice would be most welcome

Thanks

On Wed, Dec 3, 2014 at 12:47 AM, Patrick O'Callaghan
<pocallaghan(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  On Tue, 2014-12-02 at 18:24 +0100, Heinz Diehl wrote:
> > On 02.12.2014, Ali AlipourR wrote:
> >
> > > I need some advice on Backup solutions, what is your personal methods
> > > and solutions?
> >
> > rsync -avxHSAX /source/ /target
> >
> > You can even use it to move a complete installation to another disk,
> > just exchange source with target. It's fast, easy and reliable.
>
>  yum install rsnapshot
>
>  Does all the above but is designed to run regularly from cron and keep
>  backups at daily, weekly and monthly intervals (which obviously you can
>  change). Backup generations use hard links where possible to save space.
>
>  poc
>
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