[nzlug] Backups for dummies

[David Kirk]

Michal,

> I have a customer with many offices around the country, each equipped
> with a small Linux server. These servers need to be backed up, say once
> a week or two do a full backup, and every day either data only or some
> increments. The backups must go to DVD-R (most servers won't need more
> than one or two disks) and the day to day operation will be handled by
> untrained office staff (put a new DVD media in and eventually push a
> button on the screen).

I've recently been using mkcdrec (Make CD Recovery Disks).  When you
run it it will create a bootable CD or DVD with a full backup of your
system.  If your server dies, you just boot off the CD or DVD and tell
it to do a recovery.  It will partition and format the disk the same
as the old drive and restore the whole system.

> I generally prefer online backups (rsync & rdiff & friends) but that's
> not an option here. I have no experience with the regular
> backup-to-some-media things and don't know which one to chose and which
> one is easy to operate by ... ehm ... monkies.

I prefer to backup just the operating system and programs
occasionally, and do separate data backups daily.  If anything changes
dramatically on the server then I'll generate new iso's.

> What do you recommend?

I don't actually write the disks.  I set it up to backup to an nfs
server on the network and write the CD if I need to do a recovery.  It
is done in 2 parts.  First it generates bootable iso using the kernel
and tools installed on the server.  That way it will always be able to
boot on the hardware you are using.  Then it does a tar archive of the
system.  This gets added to the CD, or in my case it gets written to
the nfs share.

If you go the nfs route like me, remember to copy the bootable iso to
your nfs share as well, because by default it is just saved to /tmp.

In your case, you could get it to write the whole lot to a DVD or two.

-- 
Later

David Kirk