Jeff Lasman wrote:
On Thursday 22 January 2004 10:56 am, Jim Dory wrote:So I guess the question revolves around how to do a complete system backup once in awhile, and nightly user data/logs file backups. (Should I add /var/logs/ to raqbackup for nightlies of those?)One way is to always have an extra system around (or perhaps an extra hard disk), configured as an up-to-date RaQ of the same model you host on, with only the default site set up, but with all the extra software you normally use.Then restore to that system (or if you only have a drive, then install that drive in the broken system and restore the CMU to it.That's the easiest way, and frankly the one I highly recommend; it gets you back up and running more quickly than anything else.
Hi Jeff, thanks for the helpful comments. (I just received this since I had some weird email problem that caused me not to receive any list activity until last night since Friday. Since no-one on the list has mentioned it being down, it must be me?)
Someone else suggested setting up another raq as a secondary system, connected with the primary raq through a xo cable on their second nic ports.. and rsyncing them. I like this idea. And having a testing unit as you suggest would be great. Maybe I will shop around. I haven't decided yet whether to use my second raq that I do have in its current duty of file sharing or perhaps replace that duty with a white box and use that second raq as a backup/secondary/test bed. But it would be easiest and probably cheaper just to get a couple more raq4r,s if indeed one can anymore.
Yes, I realize this. If I understand what you think I was saying. What I meant before was that I just use the Suse box as a backup disk that goes to a tape. Then if a backup is needed on the raq, I pull it off the tape. Not expecting the Suse box to become a raq, no. But where you say in another email to test the backup.. that is smart of course and something that would be easier if I had a test raq.I've been looking at this awhile and I'm not clear on whether I can just do a "rsync /" or "flexbackup -fs all" or "find . | afio -ovZ /dev/tape" or not.I'm not sure of the specifics, but I will point out that if you rsync the entire file system to Your Suse backup server you'll break it; your standard PC won't run out of the box with a Cobalt filesystem.Nor will you be able to just take out the drive and move it to your RaQ.
I'm not sure how that works with running processes like mysql and all (which should be backed up with raqbackup) or if I need to shut down stuff first.Everyone will tell you that you can't copy over mysql and other open or continually changing file systems, but our experiments show us that you can as long as you don't care if the contents are usable or not.While this sounds like a deal-breaker it's not. You really don't care if your logs are up-to-date or not, since the backup will be old at best before you ever use it. Nor do you care about the contents of the email boxes, since they'll be old as well.Nor the contents of the mysql filesystem, since your rackbackup.sh output will give you a much more up-to-date backup of that.
Thanks for articulating this. I need to just make a decision on what step is next.. .. things are beginning to gel.
rd making it gel.
-- Jim D.