Topic: Backup to Hard Drive

[Cyrus Bharda]

Is there a rpm that instead of backing up to tape, does the same except backs up to another hard drive? Wouldnt it be way cheaper (for small to medium servers) to go out and buy a removable HDD caddy and a big ide drive and then just backup to that? Is that possible?

Thanks,

Cyrus Bharda

[Des Dougan]

There's a contrib hosted on the e-smith site (flexbackup to disk) which basically does what you want. You'd need to amend it somewhat if putting the removable disk in the same machine.


Des Dougan

[Cyrus Bharda]

I had a quick look for it but didnt find it, didnt look to hard, but when I googled e-smith flexbackup to disk I found your howto hosted on Darrell May's site:

http://myezserver.com/downloads/mitel/howto/flexbackup-to-disk-howto.html

and really that would be much better to do as then I could back it up to a share on my win2k box and then it would get backed up up again when it gets backed up.

My worry is what exactly does it backup (users, mailboxes, psyudonyms, installed rpm's, etc etc etc) and more importantly how do I the go about restoring it?

Thanks a lot for your help, muchly appreciated!!

Cyrus Bharda

[Des Dougan]

Cyrus,

As it simply replaces the tape with a disk share, it backs up everything on the server (the default flexbackup backs up /boot and /)..

As far as restoring goes, have a look at this:

http://www.e-smith.org/docs/howto/contrib/flexbackup-restore-from-disk-howto.html

Des

[Des Dougan]

I should also have noted that, although it hasn't been updated in a while, it should work on all versions, as there is nothing version-specific in the process.


Des

[Cyrus Bharda]

Just wondering if you were to restore from a shared mount wouldn't you need to do this step:

"
Setting up the mount and fstab

The Linux convention is to mount removable media from /mnt. Create a directory called /mnt/backup to act as mount point for the share created previously. Using your favourite editor, add an entry to /etc/fstab for the share:

[root@e-smith]# pico /etc/fstab

//servername/sharename  /mnt/backup  smbfs   username=name,password=pword

where "servername" and "sharename" are the name of the PC and the share you created previously. /mnt/backup identifies the mount point, while  the username and password pair are the userid and password used to logon to the PC (required for NT and Win2K systems).
"

instead of this step in the retore howto: ???

"
STEP 2: Creating the restore script
As root, in root's home directory, create the following script using your favourite editor:

[root@e-smith]# vi flexbackup_restore

mount /mnt/backup
cd /
/usr/bin/flexbackup -extract /mnt/backup/root.0.YYYYMMDD.dump.gz  -files /root/extract-list
umount /mnt/backup
"

Because in the second step it just says to mount /mnt/backup but if you have not put it in the fstab then you cannt mount it right?

Sorry for the newbie questions

Cyrus Bharda

[Des Dougan]

Cyrus,

As it says at the beginning:

STEP 1: Visit and implement this HOWTO:

http://www.e-smith.org/docs/howto/contrib/flexbackup-to-disk-howto.htm

STEP 2: Creating the restore script

So, yes you're correct to some extent - you have to do the steps in the first How To to set things up for the restore.

Regards,


Des

[jean]

How do you schedule multiple "flexbackup-to-disk"?  A template having to do with cron?  I've been backing up to disk for a few weeks and am very happy with how it works.  Now, if I can only get it to backup 4 times per day...

Thanks for any help,
Jean

[Cyrus Bharda]

How cool is that! Thanks a lot for your help Des and thanks for writing those great howto's!!!!!!!

Cyrus bharda

[Cyrus Bharda]

Just another quick question about your howto Des:

Under the first part "Setting up the mount and fstab"
There you edit the fstab file, shouldnt we be creating a template for that instead of editing the /etc/fstab file?


Thanks again for the advice

Cyrus Bharda

[Cyrus Bharda]

Oh and just another thing, after you edit the custom template /etc/cron.d/backup dont we have to expand that template so it changes the original file?

Sorry for being picky

Cyrus Bharda

[Cyrus Bharda]

Nevermind, didnt finish reading the HowTo


Hit the "Update Configuration" button.  This will expand the template and create the new /etc/cron.d/backup entry. That's it! Done, finished, complete.


Sorry

Cyrus Bharda

[Cyrus Bharda]

Your Howto works absolutly perfectly with 5.5

Even tryed the restore and it also worked beautifully!!

Thanks again Des, muchly appreciated

Cyrus Bharda

[Des Dougan]

/etc/fstab can't be templated, I believe. I seem to remember asking the same question  - it's required for the filesystems to be mounted before other services start.

Des

[Cyrus Bharda]

Doesnt matter it works BEAUTIFULLY!!

Thanks for the GREAT howto and support!!

Cyrus Bharda