Backing up programs

[Dany]

On my file server I have 2 drives. I looked at RAID but it doesn't help 
solving the major issue ... me, user removing files that are not 
supposed to be removed so incremental backup is a plus.

On the first one there is the linux system (sorry... I promise I will 
switch to fbsd) as well as data (2 directories) :

DISK 1
/    
OS
current 
      |
      |----  user 1 current      <--->   UNISON with laptop/desktop...

backup
      |
      |----- user 1 backup     <----   RSYNC-BACKUP of "user 1 current", 
incremental backup

DISK 2
/
backup
     |
     | ----  linux backup         <-----  RSYNC of the file system from 
the first drive excluding data
     | ----- user 1 backup (2)      <-----  RSYNC of the user 1 backup 
directory (already incremental in the first place)


I use 3 different programs :
- Unison :  2-way synchronization using rsync/ssh, multi platform 
graphical interface. I can have the same files on my file server, laptop 
running win2k as well as my desktop running Linux/BSD.  Very convenient 
especially with laptops when you can't be connected all the time.Very 
fast too (only transmit diffs)
- rsync :  typical rsync that will mirror the source to the destination
- rsync-backup : it's based on rsync but you get the advantage of 
incremental backups so you can restore from a specific date. You can 
also purge the backup by removing old stuff.

A couple of cron jobs take care of the different backups at night.

I don't know if that answers to your question but I thought that could 
give you some ideas.

Dany

Francisco Reyes wrote:

>With every HD problem I loose less and less data. On my last episode I
>lost only the current day's worth of data (backup at night). However I
>realised that I also need to backup programs installed on the machine. It
>takes a long time to rebuild all packages (I had a list of ports I had
>installed).
>
>How do others backup their programs?
>I am undecided between trying to backup the entire /usr/local and making
>packages of my critical ports and burning that to CDs.
>
>I also took care of all system files, but I realized that backing up all
>of /etc wasn't so helpfull if I didn't know which files I used. I also, as
>of last crash, am going to backup /usr/src since restoring all of /etc
>only makes sense with matching sources.
>
>The one thing I have against trying to backup all of /usr/local is that
>something like PostgreSQL may cause the backup problems whereas the
>package solution will be a one time deal and will not affect production.
>
>The other thing I learnt that needs to be backed up is the /usr/ports
>directory.
>
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