Looking for a Good FreeBSD and General Unix Backup System

[Roland Smith]

On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 04:30:54PM -0600, Martin McCormick wrote:
> 	Several months ago, I started using dar to backup a
> number of FreeBSD and Linux systems to one FreeBSD box. It
> worked fine once one got the syntax of the remote commands
> working, but then it all died when I moved it to a new
> FreeBSD6.3 system. 
> 
> 	If I can't figure out what is wrong or whether it is
> worth fixing, I am going to have to find some other archiver so
> we can get good backups and trust them to be easily restored.

Depends on _what you want to back up. For backing up FreeBSD system
files, use dump(8). My machines have separate partitions for /, /usr and
/var. These are all backed-up by making dumps.

For backing up user data, like /home, I prefer rsync.

If my machine breaks, I can restore the system from dumps using nothing
but a boot CD and the dumps. (to get / and all ports back up and
running), and then use rsync to restore the user data.

> 	What we plan to do is backup a bunch of Unix systems to
> one FreeBSD box and then use a commercial package to back that
> box up to an enterprise-wide system we use. The archiver we need
> must be able to make 1 full backup of each system like tar and
> then incrementals until we are ready for another full backup.
> 
> 	Any suggestions as to what is best?

Use the OS's native dump(8) command to back up the system
partitions. It's the best way to do a bare metal recovery.

For the rest, use rsync(1).

Roland
-- 
R.F.Smith                                   http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
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