Backup scheme

[Lowell Gilbert]

Svein Halvor Halvorsen <svein-freebsd-questions at theloosingend.net> writes:

> I'm in the process of employing the following backup scheme:
> 
> 1) Take a snapshot using mksnap_ffs
> 2) Mount the snapshot
> 3) rsync the mounted snapshot to a remote server
> 4) Unmount and delete local snapshot
> 5) Take a new snapshot on the remote computer
> 6) Rotate old snapshots
> 7) Somehow export the snapshots back to the original computer
> 
> 
> So I've got 1-6 working. This gived my a space efficient backup system, 
> remotely stored. As to pt. 7, I was thinking of using NFS, but since the 
> remote server is behind NAT, this seems unfeasible. So now what?
> 
> NFS over VPN? ggated/ggatec? Other solutions?

Routing protocols aren't going to help.  If you want to mount a
filesystem remotely, you need some kind of network filesystem.  NFS is
the most common way to do this, but should only be used on secure
networks (you should be able to make it traverse NAT okay, but if
there's a NAT in the way I'll guess there's probably also a public
internet).  Running NFS over an encrypted VPN is an obvious idea; you
might want to look at net/arla (AFS) as well.  There is work on an
ssh-based remote filesystem ("fuse"), but I don't know much about it
yet, beyond the fact that the recent FreeBSD status report announced
it ready for use. 
-- 
Lowell Gilbert, embedded/networking software engineer, Boston area
		http://be-well.ilk.org/~lowell/