[Discuss] rsnapshot vs. rdiff-backup

[gaf at blu.org (Jerry Feldman)]

On 12/04/2013 11:37 AM, Richard Pieri wrote:
> John Abreau wrot
>> I've never liked the way rsnapshot handles the additional levels of
>> snapshots. As I recall, the most recent weekly was several weeks old,
>> the
>> most recent monthly  was always several months old, etc.
>
> This suggests to me that the scheduling is off. It could be due to
> incorrectly staggered cron jobs or runs overlapping. Overlaps /will/
> wreck the rotation cycles so it's important not to set your backup
> runs too close together. Despite the name, the "hourly" increments
> aren't necessarily hourly; I typically run them 3-6 hours apart.
>
> Tedious, like I originally wrote. :/
>
>> Also, when I used rsnapshot to back up dozens of servers, I found
>> that if
>> only one portion of one server's backups failed, it would roll back
>> everything, and I'd lose backups for all servers.
>
> I discovered this the hard way. It's more reliable if each node runs
> its own installation and pushes to a unique directory on the backup
> target. Trying to glom many nodes together in a single rsnapshot run
> is not a good way to do it.
>
Another issue is that you set intervals for your hourlies, dailies,
weeklies, monthlies. So, if your daily interval is not 7, your weeklies
will be off. And since our calendar  month is not week based, the
monthlies will be off If your daily interval is 7, then your weekly.0
will reflect the previous week. Another issue I found with rsnapshot is
that by default, the delete was part of the backup. So, assuming I only
did hourlies, dailies and weeklies, my weekly run would take a long time
if the backup media was slow. However, rsnapshot has a "lazy" method
where the delete is backrounded. But it is important that your crons are
scheduled properly. So, in my example, the weekly would be (assuming
interval is 4),
mv weekly.3 deletennnn
mv weekly.2 weekly.3
mv weekly.1 weekly.2
mv weekly.0 weekly.1
mv daily.6 weekly.0

rm -rf deletennnn&
-------
Neither the subsequent dailies not hourlies would delete a directory.

Just a comment on Richard's stuff.
I also run rsnapshot at home on a couple of nodes. Each node has its own
rsnapshot.conf file. My home system runs hourlies every 4 hours, but
another one runs only dailies.

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
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