Time for some backups

[Ed Wilts]

On Sat, Mar 13, 2004 at 12:35:30AM +0000, Roger Beever wrote:
> I think I have Ed's recommendation working but it may need fine tuning.
> Also rsnapshot may be a little too automated for my needs so Reuben's
> might be what I finally  opt for.
> I guess I can always run rsnapshot hourly and then stop it but there may
> be a one shot option any way as I have not read the full man just the
> howto.
> Basically the workstation gets shut down at night as the fan keeps me
> awake once I get a quiet machine rsnapshot will be ideal.

rsnapshot is actually smart to handle this situation.  What it will do
is copy hourly.0 to hourly.1.  If you can't connect to the server, it
just assumes that the last good one is the one you stick with.

I run mine every 2 hours during daylight hours (hourly is just a name).
The daily/weekly/monthly run at a time when I expect the computer to
actually be one.  Here's my crontab entries:

50 10,12,14,16,18,20 * * *    root rsnapshot -q hourly
30 9 * * *      root rsnapshot -q daily
50 9 * * sun    root rsnapshot -q weekly
10 10 1 * *     root rsnapshot -q monthly

My intervals in rsnapshot.conf are as follows:
interval        hourly  6
interval        daily   7
interval        weekly  4
interval        monthly 3

Also, rsnapshot handles the daily and weekly backups properly too.  The
daily is just the oldest hourly from yesterday - the snapshots just
rotated through.  I've got many "copies" of my data using very little
disk.  It just runs by itself and I don't have to babysit it.
Occasionally rsync will spit out an error from files that are deleted in
progress (usually mail temp files) and I just delete those messages.

-- 
Ed Wilts, Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:ewilts at ewilts.org
Member #1, Red Hat Community Ambassador Program