Topic: Backup

[Noah Berlove]

Though I am quite impressed with the E-Smith package, its lack of decent backup abilities keeps me taking it seriously.  Here is my wish list of backup features:

 - Select what is backed up (e.g. just configuration files, email accounts, selected i-bays, etc);

 - Specify where the backup file is sent (i.e. specify a location on the local network or an ftp site);

 - Automatic, scheduled backups.

 - Incremental or differential backups;

 - Compression

 - Tape drive support

Sadly, until non-trivial backup features are added, it is very difficult for me to recommend E-Smith to my clients.

Noah

[Philip Aylesworth]

I agree that it would be nice to have some choice over what is backed up.

I think that e-smith would support tapes backup, though. tar is there, just hook up a tape drive, put a tar command in the crontab and away you go.

[Adam Sleight]

yeah good point but I think their target audience (newbies) the current backup is approriate.  Sure it could use improvement.  But in the meantime just add a SCSI adapter and a DDS-3 (12/24GB) or DDS-4 DAT (20/40GB) drive and backup your data specifying which directories you wished backed up.

in your crontab put something like the following
tar cvfM /dev/st0 /home; mt -f /dev/st0 rewoff
    Months *, Days of Month *, Days of Week 2-6, Hours 4, Minutes 0

Backsup the /home directory (M=spans multipe tapes) to your scsi tape device and then rewinds it and ejects it.  Backups every Tue-Sat at 4am


Mondo looks promising (search for it on freashmeat) where it'll back up your distro after installation and you can exclude user data.

Quotas would be nice...especially for those with IMAP accounts.