[plug] Current state / method / best programs to backup home desktop Ubuntu 13.04

[Brad Campbell]

On 13/08/13 09:39, Gregory Orange wrote:

> I was going to mention my rdiff-backup based solution similar to
> Brad's, but you said 'easiest' so I held off (: It's pretty
> straightforward, but there is a bit of shell scripting to make it
> behave the way I want. I also rotate between two USB backup disks and
> take one to the office for a level of unplugged, offsite backup.
>
> I guess it's the sysadmin tradeoff - more work to setup, very low
> effort to operate and maintain. I detest the other way around (or at
> least the 'more work to operate and maintain' part).

I once heard someone say "A good sysadmin is a lazy sysadmin". An 
automated system (if done right) is infinitely more reliable than a 
manual process.

Every machine I have access to is backed up nightly to a local WD live 
at home with 60 days of rotating history, and once a week the current 
snapshot is exported to the remote backup where there are 15 weeks of 
rotating backups (we are both on Amnet, so effectively free bandwidth).

I get an e-mail once a day with a list of the backups, how long each one 
took (wall clock time) and which (if any) remote machines or laptops 
were skipped due to connectivity issues.

<last nights>
Backup of root at ns1.fnarfbargle.com:/ completed in 3 Minutes, 28 Seconds
Backup of root at ns2.fnarfbargle.com:/ completed in 1 Minute, 33 Seconds
Backup of root at ns3.fnarfbargle.com:/ completed in 24 Seconds
Backup of root at bkmac:/ completed in 15 Minutes, 56 Seconds
Backup of root at bkmac:/home/ completed in 28 Minutes, 38 Seconds
Backup of root at bklaptop:/ completed in 8 Minutes, 38 Seconds
Backup of root at bklaptop:/home/ completed in 44 Minutes, 36 Seconds
Backup of root at bklaptop:/tracks/ completed in 7 Minutes, 4 Seconds
ssh: connect to host cot.vpn port 22: Connection timed out

Backup of root at cot.vpn:/ failed due to connectivity
mount: can't find /media/removable in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab
Backup USB drive is not mounted
Backup of root at srv:/ completed in 6 Minutes, 43 Seconds
Backup of root at srv:/home/ completed in 16 Minutes, 23 Seconds
Backup of root at srv:/server/ccd-enc/ completed in 29 Seconds
Backup of root at srv:/s/work/ completed in 1 Minute, 17 Seconds
Backup of root at srv:/server/zimbra-backup/ completed in 34 Seconds
Backup of root at ccd-server.vm:/ completed in 42 Seconds
Backup of root at zimbra.vm:/ completed in 1 Minute, 43 Seconds
Backup of root at zimbra.vm:/opt/zimbra/ completed in 7 Minutes, 30 Seconds

It took a little while to get it working "just so", but it has paid off 
many times over in recovery from both fat fingers and hardware failures.

I'm the go-to guy when friends and family have hard disk failures and 
it's a service I'd be more than happy to never provide again. I can't 
emphasise enough the importance of a good backup system.