Recommendations for home backup solution

[Mike Noble]

CB wrote:
> Can anyone suggest approaches for backing up a small home network (2
> linux pcs and a linux/winxp dual-booting laptop). My criteria are:
> 
> * automaticity. It just won't happen unless it does itself once set up.
> I'll probably have to trigger the laptop one manually, but even there
> I'd like user data to be regularly (or even constantly?)  synced with
> backup if possible.
> 
> * use of existing media: I can't buy anything new and expensive, so have
> to be able to back up either to cd's (not likely though: would need a
> stack) or an external usb hard drive. My machines only have a total of
> about 150GB of disk space.
> 
> * ease of setup. Obviously I'll have to spend a bit of time to set it
> up, but I'd really like it not to take me days, and I'm no linux expert.
> 
> Possible things I've glanced at include rsync (at least for user data),
> cpio, tar, backuppc (anyone used it? looks interesting), mondorescue.
> 
> I'm interested in real personal experience: it seems to me that any of
> these tools *could* do what I need but I'd love to hear from someone who
> has really used them with success.
> 

I you have a spare disk with enough space, this will work great.
I use this method, the  possibilities of both disks failing at
the same time are slim (yes it can happen).  You mention a laptop
but do not say what OS it is running, I will assume it is Linux.
Dump is a great command to dump file systems to just about
anything.
I have a second disk which gets mounted as /backup and here is
a simple dump command to backup my /home partition:

This command will do a complete backup of the /home partition
writing it to a file in the /backup partition with the name
being: home.level0.epoch-2004-10-09, this is run once a week.

dump 0uf /backup/home.level0.epoch-`date +%F` /home

On a daily basis I want to backup just things that have changed
since the last full:

dump 2uf /backup/home.level2.epoch-`date +%F` /home

To restore files, you use the command restore.

dump and restore are included with Linux, for more information
on dump and restore, refer to the man pages.

BTW: dump and restore were created by BSD UNIX.


Mike
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