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Bryan - You write: >I'd like everyone's advice on how to backup the following system layout on >my home LAN: > > >Systems: 1 linux box w/ 7.0 GB HD (1.2 used currently) > 1 linux box w/ 5.8 GB HD (2.5 used currently) > 1 sparc box w/ 1.4 GB HD (nearly full) > >I want to back up critical files, user homes, mail, etc. on a regular >basis and have figured out a backup schedule (incremental) to do this.. >what would be the best method? > >I was contemplating backing up using tar over nfs to one of the machines, >then circulating that copy to the other linux box... any other ideas? I suggest tar over rsh. A trick is needed to run the tar command as root (so it has read access to any file), but the rsh as a normal user (so it can login to the other machine). I believe I first saw this in the docs to "tob". The trick is to connect the two processes with a named pipe (created with "mkfifo /mypipe"). I use something like this: su jrv -c "rsh $HOST \"cat >/usr1/backup/home.tar.gz\" < /mypipe"& cd / tar -czf - home >/mypipe Here, this command gets run as normal user `jrv', taking its input from the named pipe on this machine: rsh $HOST "cat >/usr1/backup/home.tar.gz" < /mypipe This command gets run on the other machine ($HOST): cat >/usr1/backup/home.tar.gz This command, of course, makes and compresses the backup and writes it to the named pipe: tar -czf - home >/mypipe I suppose cpio can work the same way, but I am more comfortable with tar. With your setup, I guess I would back machine 1->2, 2->1, and 3->1. Advantages: - Only needs ordinary user privileges on the other machine. - Faster than NFS. - The userids and groupids on the two machines need not match (unlike NFS). - If you back up to a disk, you can fully automate things with a cron job. Disadvantages: - Slower and more awkward to search through than NFS (to recover a single file) - Not secure (though switching from rsh to ssh would help). - Jim Van Zandt - Subcription/unsubscription/info requests: send e-mail with "subscribe", "unsubscribe", or "info" on the first line of the message body to discuss-request at blu.org (Subject line is ignored).
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