Backup over the internet.

[Matthew Seaman]

On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 09:08:15AM +0000, DanB wrote:
> What is the easy way to back up over the internet? What software should
> be used?

That's a rather vague question, which makes it pretty hard to give a
sensible answer, I'm afraid.

Ease is a very subjective thing.  There's certainly many more than one
way of achieving such tasks, many of which seem about equally easy to
me. Pretty much every Unix utility ever designed to copy the contents
of a filesystem onto a tape drive has the capability to access a
remote tape.  Even more: any utility capable of copying files from one
machine to another could be considered usable for backup purposes.

Generally copying the files from machine to machine is only half the
problem.  Setting up a backup schedule, making the backups run
automatically and unattended, testing that your backups are actually
fit for purpose (it's amazing how many people have only found out that
their tape drive had malfunctioned and wasn't writing anything on the
tapes at the point of trying to recover a crashed system...)
etc. etc. All need to be considered.

I can certainly point you at some manual pages for some commonly used
software.  See:

    dump(8)
    tar(1)
    scp(1)
    rsync(1)   [ports: net/rsync, http://rsync.samba.org/]
    amanda     [ports: misc/amanda-server, misc/amanda-client
                http://sourceforge.net/projects/amanda/]

See also the SSH FAQ on how to set up ssh(1) (which all of dump(1),
scp(1) and rsync(1) run on top of) to do unattended logins:

    http://www.snailbook.com/faq/no-passphrase.auto.html

Perhaps you would like to restate your question with a lot more detail
about exactly what you want to do and what your constraints are. Such
things as: how much data you have to backup; bandwidth limitations
between your server and where you're backing it up to; what sort of
device you're writing to; security requirements -- can the data be
transmitted across the internet in plaintext, or does it have to be
encrypted?  Can it be stored on the backup medium unencrypted? How can
you authenticate yourself to the backup server?

	Cheers,

	Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                       26 The Paddocks
                                                      Savill Way
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey         Marlow
Tel: +44 1628 476614                                  Bucks., SL7 1TH UK
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