Re: [rdiff-backup-users] Safe to mirror backup dir with rsync?

[Engel Sanchez]

Thank you all for your suggestions!  I'm going to go with the solution of doing 
cascaded rdiff-backups both pointing at the source directories and without 
rsync and simply spreading the cron jobs to avoid touching the sources while 
they are updated (the sources are hot copies of a couple of databases and a 
subversion repo).  Using rsync and risking leaving the remote backup in a bad 
state didn't seem like a great idea to me. (Say rsync's connection breaks and 
original server fails before next backup). At least rdiff-backup can deal with 
a partially updated backup if also done by rdiff-backup.  

 Engel A. Sanchez


“Do what you love to do and give it your very best. Whether it's business or 
baseball, or the theater, or any field. If you don't love what you're doing and 
you can't give it your best, get out of it. Life is too short. You'll be an old 
man before you know it.”


http://engelsanchez.net



----- Original Message ----
From: Alex Samad <address@hidden>
To: address@hidden
Sent: Wed, December 23, 2009 4:13:16 PM
Subject: Re: [rdiff-backup-users] Safe to mirror backup dir with rsync?

On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 12:52:03AM +0100, Cybertinus wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I'm using rdiff-backup to create the backups of my directories. It all
> goes to /backup, which is a external harddrive. Then I'm using rsync to
> mirror everything to /backup_sync, which is a second external harddrive.
> This one is encrypted and I move it to an external location once a week
> (and the disk from the external location then becomes the sync disk ;)
> ). I'm using this strategy because when I swap the sync disks, they are
> disconnected from my computer for a day. Some data I'm backing up every
> hour, so I need a external drive at my computer at all times.
> This system is working perfectly for me. The only thing I would
> recommend is to prevent running rdiff-backup at the same time as rsync.
> To prevent that your mirror is accidentally destroyed, because you would
> by rsyncing incomplete rdiff-backup data. I haven't build in this
> precaution in my backupscripts yet. For the time being I'm preventing it
> from running at the same moment by choosing the correct times in my
> cronjobs.

Hi

I am doing something similar.

local machine rdiff-backup to /backup (lvm partition).
then a rsync to the local backup server and at the same time a rsync to
an offsite location - via adsl.

I do this because my initial rdiff-backup can happen quickly and cause
the lest disruption - if the source is on a lvm I can take a snapshot
and use that but not all the sources are.

I have come across one problem, if the over adsl takes too long the
rdiff-backup destination on the local machine can change thus giving you
a non in sync backup offsite.

There is another thread asking for a tool to lock the destination to
prevent this

Alex

> 
> Cheers,
> Cybertinus
> 
> On 23/12/09 00:03, Gavin wrote:
> > Hi Engel,
[snip]

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