Considering the budget cuts that many companies are observing, the expectations that a “perfectly” working IT system exists is always looming over us system admins; “Make it all work but, I’m sorry I can’t give you a better budget.”
Backups. How can you backup all data effectively and cheap?
I use a small program called “rsync” which is native to Linux. It’s not a Veristas, but it does what I want effectively and almost as good as some other backup software out there. And it’s pretty darn fast.
The question boils down to “What are backups basically?” I would say storing data from a source location to a secondary destination location. rsync does exactly just that and the best part is that it can be run over a network.
Which then brings up the question, "Can I use rsync on my windows shares?" And the answer is “Yes You Can!” Simply mount the windows share on Linux (using smbmount)
Read ahead to learn how rsync can help you to back up your data...
Open a console window (xterm or terminal of your liking - I personally like yakuake) and type in the following, but DON’T press enter yet:
$rsync -avnu --progress --stats
To explain a bit...
* "-a" means "Backup all sub-directories maintaining all permissions, groups, users, times, and devices."
* the "v" means "Be verbose."
* the "n" after the "v" means "Just tell me what you're going to do."
* the "u" after the "n" means "Only update stuff. Don't re-copy things with more recent timestamps."
* the "--progress" means "Give me progress updates."
* the "--stats" means "Let me know exactly what you did."
And that's the first part. Next step is to type in your source directory (DON’T press enter yet!)
$rsync -avnu --progress --stats /home/tony/Documents/
...and finally the destination directory... (You can press the enter key now)
$rsync -avnu --progress --stats /home/tony/Documents/ /backup/Documents/
It is necessary to include the trailing "/" characters on the end of the directory, e.g. "...Documents/" when backing up sub-directories.
When the program finishes, you'll notice a lot of information on your screen. It'll probably look something like this:
receiving file list ...
6290 files to consider
--Many files will appear here--
Number of files: 1220
Number of files transferred: 16
Total file size: 11163786283491 bytes
Total transferred file size: 438111470 bytes
Literal data: 0 bytes
Matched data: 0 bytes
File list size: 2329898
Total bytes written: 89
Total bytes read: 2329898
wrote 80 bytes read 2329898 bytes 20445.38 bytes/sec
total size is 11163786283491 speedup is 376742.35
rsync found 1220 files to back up, but it only set 16 to actually be backed up.
Now, if the output looks right, go ahead and run the real thing by taking out the "n" option and pressing enter.
$rsync -avu --progress --stats /home/tony/Documents/ /backup/Documents/
If you would like to learn more about rsync, type the command:
$man rsync
Backups. How can you backup all data effectively and cheap?
I use a small program called “rsync” which is native to Linux. It’s not a Veristas, but it does what I want effectively and almost as good as some other backup software out there. And it’s pretty darn fast.
The question boils down to “What are backups basically?” I would say storing data from a source location to a secondary destination location. rsync does exactly just that and the best part is that it can be run over a network.
Which then brings up the question, "Can I use rsync on my windows shares?" And the answer is “Yes You Can!” Simply mount the windows share on Linux (using smbmount)
Read ahead to learn how rsync can help you to back up your data...
Open a console window (xterm or terminal of your liking - I personally like yakuake) and type in the following, but DON’T press enter yet:
$rsync -avnu --progress --stats
To explain a bit...
* "-a" means "Backup all sub-directories maintaining all permissions, groups, users, times, and devices."
* the "v" means "Be verbose."
* the "n" after the "v" means "Just tell me what you're going to do."
* the "u" after the "n" means "Only update stuff. Don't re-copy things with more recent timestamps."
* the "--progress" means "Give me progress updates."
* the "--stats" means "Let me know exactly what you did."
And that's the first part. Next step is to type in your source directory (DON’T press enter yet!)
$rsync -avnu --progress --stats /home/tony/Documents/
...and finally the destination directory... (You can press the enter key now)
$rsync -avnu --progress --stats /home/tony/Documents/ /backup/Documents/
It is necessary to include the trailing "/" characters on the end of the directory, e.g. "...Documents/" when backing up sub-directories.
When the program finishes, you'll notice a lot of information on your screen. It'll probably look something like this:
receiving file list ...
6290 files to consider
--Many files will appear here--
Number of files: 1220
Number of files transferred: 16
Total file size: 11163786283491 bytes
Total transferred file size: 438111470 bytes
Literal data: 0 bytes
Matched data: 0 bytes
File list size: 2329898
Total bytes written: 89
Total bytes read: 2329898
wrote 80 bytes read 2329898 bytes 20445.38 bytes/sec
total size is 11163786283491 speedup is 376742.35
rsync found 1220 files to back up, but it only set 16 to actually be backed up.
Now, if the output looks right, go ahead and run the real thing by taking out the "n" option and pressing enter.
$rsync -avu --progress --stats /home/tony/Documents/ /backup/Documents/
If you would like to learn more about rsync, type the command:
$man rsync
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