Cross-Platform Backup Software

[Ian Petersen]

On 10/3/07, Kareem Shehata <kareem-d+8TeBu5bOew5LPnMra/2Q at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> 1)  What can I use to grab all of that data in a coherent way?

I think you'll find everyone on the list with an opinion will have a
different opinion on this matter.  I'm using rdiff-backup, but
considering switching to rsnapshot.  I don't have a Windows machine to
worry about, but I've heard that both can be made to work on Windows
(possibly under Cygwin).  You might want to look at AMANDA, because,
as I understand, it's purpose-built for cross-platform, network
backups.  I also hear it's complicated, so it might be overkill for a
network of three machines.

> 2)  Is it possible to just mount the drive to the server and have all of the
> end devices backup to it through the network?

Yeah, you should be able to share the backup repository via NFS or
Samba and then have the clients dump stuff to it.  You might want to
try the other direction: have the backup server go out to the network
devices and pull the data.  A backup needs to be fairly secure so you
can rely on its integrity.  You might want to restrict access to it to
the machine containing the physical media.  I might be paranoid in
that regard.

> 3)  Will it be possible to read the backup format in other tools and OS's?

Systems like rdiff-backup and rsnapshot just use a bunch of files to
store their backups.  In the case of rdiff-backup, the incremental
reverse-diffs are stored in a somewhat funky format, but it's all well
described on the homepage, and, in the end, it's just a bunch of diffs
in some files.  My point is that, if you pick the right backup system,
and the right filesystem, you should be able to read your backups
indefinitely.  You may need to upgrade the filesystem if, for example,
you pick e2fs and find, say, five years from now that the kernel will
no longer support it.  In that case you should be able to just copy
the backup repository from one filesystem to another using your
favourite file-wrangling tools.

Ian

-- 
Tired of pop-ups, security holes, and spyware?
Try Firefox: http://www.getfirefox.com
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists