[luau] Reccomendations for backup routine/tools

[Ben Beeson]

MonMotha,

	Right now, the script does a complete backup everytime you run it.   
However, by copying the script to a new name, and then changing the tar 
flags, you could do incremental backups on days when you don't need a full 
backup.  These scripts could then be called by separate crontab entries.  For 
example, you could do a full backup on Sunday nite with the full backup 
script, and then incremental backups Monday thru Saturday with the other 
script.  If your data changes more often than that, you could do full backups 
M,W,F or whatever you think you need.  Just stick in a tape before you go to 
bed and let the crontab do its thing.  

	The idea for my script was inspired by the article in Chapter 10 of 
Essential System Administration by Aeleen Frisch, and various articles on tar 
in Unix Power Tools by Peek, O'Reilly, and Loukides (try chapter 20 for 
instance).  Frisch's article discusses backup strategies pretty well, and i 
highly recommend that read, it is one chapter full of goodies.  I also seem 
to recall a recent article in Linux Journal about a novel use of a version 
control software like CVS to do system backups.  I can't find it just yet, 
perhaps someone else can point it out.

	BTW, I also have another script that I use to clean out the browser cache 
before I backup my system -- no sense saving that stuff.  It only works for 
Netscape right now, and as soon as I totally switch to Mozilla, I'll modify 
that one because "ziller" puts the cache in a different spot than Netscape 
4.X.   

	I'll send the scripts to you separately.

Good luck,

Ben 


On Thursday 23 May 2002 06:55 pm, you wrote:
> I was looking more for a complete backup kind of thing.  A script that
> would just be run every night and would pick the appropriate level of
> backup based on the day in my rotation.
>
> Is that what this is, or could this be easily modified to do such a
> thing (most of what I'm looking for is the multiple levels of
> incrementivitivy [is that a word?] implemented, I can code the day
> checking myself)?  If so, I'd like very much to see it so I could use it :)
>
> --MonMotha
>
>