incremental FTP backup program

[Roland Smith]

On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 05:29:54PM +0100, bsd wrote:
> Hello, 
> 
> I have been provided with a 1To backup space by my hosting company…
> unfortunately It is only accessible by FTP which does not allow me to do the
> regular backup / restore I use to do using RSYNC.
> 
> 
> What are the options I have in order to do the backup / restore of the files
> knowing that :
> 
> 1. I would like to have a time based backup solution (incremental with
> sub-folder for daily backup so I can restore files from xxx days ago).
> 
> 2. I need to use ftp as a transport
> 
> 3. Some of my servers have limited space so doing a local sync then FTP will
> not be possible.
> 
> 4. If possible I would like a bullet proof solution ideally "well known" |
> tested and available from the port tree.

There are several avenues available even with the tools in the base system.

One of those is to use dump(8), assuming you are using UFS filesystems, of
course. Make regular dumps (of different levels), compress them using
bzip2(1), encrypt the compressed dumpfiles using openssl(1) (do _not_ use
crypt(1)!) and use ftp(1) to transfer them to the hosting company.

Another way is to use mtree(8). You can use this to generate a file containing the
state of a filesystem hierarchy. Running it against a previously saved
specification can yield a list of files that have changed. Use tar and bzip2
to create an archive of the files that have changed. Encrypt and send same as
above. 

All these programs come with the base system, you would just need to script
them.

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