backup files options

[me at mattgillen.net (Matthew Gillen)]

Dave Peters wrote:
> Hi there,
> 
> What's the option to backup big folder? Like /cvs/
> I am using Veritas to back some Linux file and want to
> do some backup in case Veritas has problem.
> 
> Any help are very appreciated.

Backup to where?  Some other disk on the same system?  A remote system?

If you just want to make an archive somewhere on your local system, then
tar/cpio/zip would all work:

Tar:
cd /
tar -cvf ~/cvs.tar /cvs
(add the 'z' flag, as in '-zcvf', and change the output filename to cvs.tar.gz
if you want it compressed)

Zip:
cd /
zip -r ~/cvs.zip /cvs

Tar does the right thing with symlinks and device files by default, which is
why I prefer it over a straight 'cp' command (which of course can be coerced
with the right options into doing the right thing).  I'm not sure how zip
handles symlinks now that I think about it.

rsync is another option if you want to make backups of huge data directories
often and want to save some time, since it does differencing and only copies
changes (which is very useful for network backups).

Note also that when backing up the file-based backend of a database-type of
system (ie like cvs), you'd be wise to make sure that the it's in a quiescent
state before you do the backup (ie make sure the server is shut down and no
one has access to it).  If you happen to make your backup while a commit is
happening, you could end up with something that would be inconsistent or
broken out-of-the-box if you needed to restore from that backup.

HTH,
Matt

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