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rsnapshot
Authored by: sr105 on Jan 18, '06 08:03:42AM
You may want to check out rsnapshot. It is a python script that wraps around rsync and allows for incremental backups. It will produce directories by default for every 4 hours, 7 days, 4 weeks, and 3 months. Each directory should be an exact copy of your filesystem at that time, but it uses hard links to keep the space requirements down. Meaning only one copy of the file really exists even though it appears in multiple directories. I'm not sure if it has the load feature, though.

Oh, and it will do multiple systems and can also just do portions of them if you like.

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rsnapshot
Authored by: lar3ry on Jan 18, '06 11:51:32AM

Actually, rsync DOES do incremental backups. The "--backup" and "--backup-dir" options will dump the old version of any file found in the destination before overwriting it. I use this myself and put the incrementals into directory trees that have the year/month/day prefixed to the actual subdirectory name. rsync is pretty versatile like that...!

I once got burned by another "improvement" on rsync (called rdiff-backup), which did incrementals and compression, but the repository somehow got corrupted, keeping me from getting any of my old data. I stopped using that utility quickly thereafter. (It may be better now, but once bitten, twice shy.)

Using the --backup* options, a file corruption will only corrupt a single file. Disk corruption can still cause problems as well, but it won't corrupt the entire repository (hopefully).

Of course, you DO backup your backups, don't you?



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