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jpd
*nix forums Guru
Joined: 22 Feb 2005
Posts: 877
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 Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2006 3:49 pm Post subject:
Re: Simple BSD Backup System
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Begin <jV6vg.35363$1g.11783@newsfe1-win.ntli.net>
On 2006-07-18, John Richards <john.richards280@tesco.net> wrote:
| Quote: | I have looked carefully at the Handbook and on Google, but can find no
simple system for doing a backup of my installation in FreeBSD.
|
The native way to do backups is to use dump( to make a restore(8)able
image of a filesystem. This is ``simple'' in the sense that it is one
operation on one filesystem. But maybe not in the way you want it to be
``simple''.
| Quote: | With Linux, I use Partimage, which does a magnificent job, compressing
the image at the same time to a single restorable file. Unfortunately,
although Partimage will do a backup of XP perfectly well, it seems
it cannot cope with BSD - which seems a little odd, with two Unix
derivatives.
|
The logical conclusion is that, if that one program is important enough
for you, then your options are to 1) find alternatives, 2) use linux, 3)
port the program, and 4) would be to find help with 3) if you can't do
it alone. But, as they say, you catch more flies with honey than with
vinegar.
Note that this kind of stuff works on the filesystem level and that it
needs particular support for a particular filesystem. A quick look at
their webpage mentions UFS support as being ``beta'', but no mention of
UFS2. Also note that your mention of ``BSD'' is probably not precise
enough. I doubt they will ever support the ancient Berkeley Software
Distribution, altough its more modern derivates they might.
Precise support questions you'll have to ask the authors of the program.
| Quote: | At the same time, I can find no BSD equivalent of Partimage, or any
comparable system. The complex saving to tape of the handbook is
hardly the same thing at all. What one needs ideally is a simple
system to save a compressed image, as a file, either to an MSDOS
directory (since it can't write to Linux ones), or else to CD/DVD.
Any suggestions?
|
If everybody's backup needs where exactly the same as yours, every
backup system in the world would look like your pet favourite. Since
the latter isn't true, is it possible the former isn't true, also?
I'd suggest two things: First, not gripe in generalities that the entire
world doesn't work exactly like you want it to. That you have read the
handbook first is good, but that's no excuse for griping that it didn't
gave you the exact answer you wanted. Second, go talk to the Partimage
folks and ask them about getting it to work on FreeBSD.
--
j p d (at) d s b (dot) t u d e l f t (dot) n l .
This message was originally posted on Usenet in plain text.
Any other representation, additions, or changes do not have my
consent and may be a violation of international copyright law. |
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F. Senault
*nix forums beginner
Joined: 28 Apr 2005
Posts: 30
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| Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2006 4:12 pm Post subject:
Re: Simple BSD Backup System
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Le 18 juillet à 17:14, John Richards a écrit :
| Quote: | What one needs ideally is a
simple system to save a compressed image, as a file, either to an MSDOS
directory (since it can't write to Linux ones), or else to CD/DVD.
Any suggestions?
|
Read carefully the manpages of dump / mksnap_ffs (handbook sections
17.11 and forward). Something like :
dump -L0f- /dev/*your partition* | gzip > *the dump destination*
Will make a compressed image of a partition. Automating it and making
it simpler involves a few lines of shell script.
Fred
--
You make this all go away (2x) I'm down to just one thing I'm starting
to scare myself You make this all go away (2x) I just want something
I just want something I can never have
(Nine Inch Nails, Something I Can Never Have) |
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John Richards
*nix forums beginner
Joined: 03 Sep 2005
Posts: 23
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| Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2006 4:13 pm Post subject:
Re: Simple BSD Backup System
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jpd wrote:
| Quote: | Begin <jV6vg.35363$1g.11783@newsfe1-win.ntli.net
On 2006-07-18, John Richards <john.richards280@tesco.net> wrote:
I have looked carefully at the Handbook and on Google, but can find no
simple system for doing a backup of my installation in FreeBSD.
The native way to do backups is to use dump( to make a restore(8)able
image of a filesystem. This is ``simple'' in the sense that it is one
operation on one filesystem. But maybe not in the way you want it to be
``simple''.
With Linux, I use Partimage, which does a magnificent job, compressing
the image at the same time to a single restorable file. Unfortunately,
although Partimage will do a backup of XP perfectly well, it seems
it cannot cope with BSD - which seems a little odd, with two Unix
derivatives.
The logical conclusion is that, if that one program is important enough
for you, then your options are to 1) find alternatives, 2) use linux, 3)
port the program, and 4) would be to find help with 3) if you can't do
it alone. But, as they say, you catch more flies with honey than with
vinegar.
Note that this kind of stuff works on the filesystem level and that it
needs particular support for a particular filesystem. A quick look at
their webpage mentions UFS support as being ``beta'', but no mention of
UFS2. Also note that your mention of ``BSD'' is probably not precise
enough. I doubt they will ever support the ancient Berkeley Software
Distribution, altough its more modern derivates they might.
Precise support questions you'll have to ask the authors of the program.
At the same time, I can find no BSD equivalent of Partimage, or any
comparable system. The complex saving to tape of the handbook is
hardly the same thing at all. What one needs ideally is a simple
system to save a compressed image, as a file, either to an MSDOS
directory (since it can't write to Linux ones), or else to CD/DVD.
Any suggestions?
If everybody's backup needs where exactly the same as yours, every
backup system in the world would look like your pet favourite. Since
the latter isn't true, is it possible the former isn't true, also?
I'd suggest two things: First, not gripe in generalities that the entire
world doesn't work exactly like you want it to. That you have read the
handbook first is good, but that's no excuse for griping that it didn't
gave you the exact answer you wanted. Second, go talk to the Partimage
folks and ask them about getting it to work on FreeBSD.
I think you are a little bit hard, if you will forgive my saying so! |
I am not griping. I think that FreeBSD is great, and I would like to
have the confidence to transfer to it. But until I have a satisfactory
and reliable backup system, that would be rather unwise, don't you
think? - not that I think FreeBSD is unstable, but to guard against my
own clumsy attempts to experiment.
I am not looking for a Partimage CLONE, but for something comparably
easy to use, and which also produces a file of a reasonable size. I am
sorry if you think that is unreasonable. |
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Greg Hennessy
*nix forums addict
Joined: 27 Feb 2005
Posts: 91
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| Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2006 4:25 pm Post subject:
Re: Simple BSD Backup System
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On Tue, 18 Jul 2006 15:14:23 GMT, John Richards
<john.richards280@tesco.net> wrote:
Yes, RTFMP on dump/restore.
| Quote: | The complex saving to tape of the
handbook is hardly the same thing at all.
|
It's neither 'complex' or limited to tape.
In fact it's trivial to do proper backups over NFS using dump.
Assuming you have a spare wintel box running XP, MS Services For Unix is
free and gives one a pretty reasonable NFS server implementation. Once you
have the backup on there, add to the normal cycle.
greg
--
If you want venality, if you want ignorance, if you want drunkenness,
and facility for being intimidated; or if, on the other hand, you
want impulsive, unreflecting, and violent people, where do you look
Do you go to the top or to the bottom? |
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james
*nix forums Guru Wannabe
Joined: 08 Mar 2005
Posts: 282
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| Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2006 4:33 pm Post subject:
Re: Simple BSD Backup System
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F. Senault wrote:
| Quote: | Read carefully the manpages of dump / mksnap_ffs (handbook sections
17.11 and forward). Something like :
dump -L0f- /dev/*your partition* | gzip > *the dump destination*
Will make a compressed image of a partition. Automating it and making
it simpler involves a few lines of shell script.
|
bzip will probably give you much better compression and 7-zip (p7zip in
ports) even better than that.
--
- - james <at> hal-pc.org - -
"Poor is a state of mind. Broke is a state of wallet.
You can fix being broke; it's not so easy to fix being poor."
- Ric Edelman
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
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Michel Talon
*nix forums Guru
Joined: 21 Feb 2005
Posts: 557
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| Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2006 4:57 pm Post subject:
Re: Simple BSD Backup System
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John Richards <john.richards280@tesco.net> wrote:
| Quote: |
I am not griping. I think that FreeBSD is great, and I would like to
have the confidence to transfer to it. But until I have a satisfactory
and reliable backup system, that would be rather unwise, don't you
think? - not that I think FreeBSD is unstable, but to guard against my
own clumsy attempts to experiment.
I am not looking for a Partimage CLONE, but for something comparably
easy to use, and which also produces a file of a reasonable size. I am
sorry if you think that is unreasonable.
|
As somebody already said, (dump | restore) coupled with gzip will do
exactly the same thing as partimage, that is read the filesystem and backup
only the used blocks and compress them. The only problem is to learn how to
use it. The basic usage to dump and restore through a pipe is
dump -0f - / | restore -rf -
Then you can stack all sorts of commands such as gzip, rsh or ssh in the pipe
to put the backup in compressed form on another machine, etc, that is
recover all the functionalities of partimage.
For example
dump -0f - | gzip | ssh myself@some_machine 'cat > backup'
will put the compressed backup of root partition on some_machine.
ssh myself@some_machine cat backup|gunzip|restore -rf -
will restore it.
Don't forget that you can run all those commands from a good live
freebsd cdrom like frenzy(*), and you have all what you need and more.
The only gotcha: dump works only on filesystems, so you have to specify the
filesystem as in fstab here /. And second dump can work for several levels
dumps, here you need the full dump, that is zero level.
(*)http://frenzy.org.ua/eng/
Try it, you will love it. Another lovable tool is qemu to practice
all those commands on virtual machines without risk.
--
Michel TALON |
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jpd
*nix forums Guru
Joined: 22 Feb 2005
Posts: 877
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| Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2006 5:57 pm Post subject:
Re: Simple BSD Backup System
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Begin <xM7vg.9984$s4.7722@newsfe3-win.ntli.net>
On 2006-07-18, John Richards <john.richards280@tesco.net> wrote:
| Quote: | I think you are a little bit hard, if you will forgive my saying so!
|
I don't think so, otherwise I'd not said it. I do think that your
style of asking for help could use some improvements.
| Quote: | I am not griping. I think that FreeBSD is great, and I would like to
have the confidence to transfer to it. But until I have a satisfactory
and reliable backup system, that would be rather unwise, don't you
think? - not that I think FreeBSD is unstable, but to guard against my
own clumsy attempts to experiment.
|
I did not say there wasn't. I did say that your assumption of what
constitutes ``easy'' is both short-sighted and self-centered. This
doesn't mean that the exact thing you appear to want is a bad idea.
But your implication that the myriad of other backup solutions Out
There collectively fail to be ``easy'' because they're not exactly
what you were looking for is patently false.
| Quote: | I am not looking for a Partimage CLONE, but for something comparably
easy to use, and which also produces a file of a reasonable size. I am
sorry if you think that is unreasonable.
|
That's not what you said earlier, and that's not what I said either.
Anyway, I also already noted that support for FreeBSD might already be
in the program you want, and that this really isn't the right place to
ask the authors of the program about its details.
Oh, and please do trim your posts, please.
--
j p d (at) d s b (dot) t u d e l f t (dot) n l .
This message was originally posted on Usenet in plain text.
Any other representation, additions, or changes do not have my
consent and may be a violation of international copyright law. |
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John Richards
*nix forums beginner
Joined: 03 Sep 2005
Posts: 23
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| Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2006 7:06 pm Post subject:
Re: Simple BSD Backup System
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Some of these answers have been extremely helpful and considerate - for
which, many thanks indeed.
Some of the writers of some of the others perhaps don't realise how
arrogant they sound. Not all of us have C++ on toast for breakfast, but
it does not mean we are necessarily stupid or have not read and
struggled with the handbook. |
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Lowell Gilbert
*nix forums Guru Wannabe
Joined: 20 Feb 2005
Posts: 280
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| Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2006 7:10 pm Post subject:
Re: Simple BSD Backup System
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Greg Hennessy <me@privacy.org> writes:
| Quote: | On Tue, 18 Jul 2006 15:14:23 GMT, John Richards <john.richards280@tesco.net> wrote:
Any suggestions?
Yes, RTFMP on dump/restore.
|
There are cases where it's not the best method of backup, but those
cases, as far as I've seen, are fairly specialized.
| Quote: | The complex saving to tape of the
handbook is hardly the same thing at all.
It's neither 'complex' or limited to tape.
|
True, but on first read-through, either the "Backup Basics -- Dump
and Restore" bit of the Handbook or the dump( manual could lead a
neophyte to think otherwise. It may be time to add an "examples"
section to the dump( manual.
I think dump is probably the best way to back up a Linux system, too.
I don't understand the obsession with getting bit-for-bit copies of
filesystem, even to the point of including the unused space.
| Quote: | In fact it's trivial to do proper backups over NFS using dump.
|
Specifically, the minimal incantation for a full dump is along the
lines of:
# dump -0a -f <output file> <filesystem>
and whether "output file" is on an NFS filesystem is completely
unimportant to the dump command.
For a practical example of how to use these things, you can see some
of the backup scripts I use at
http://be-well.ilk.org/~lowell/systuff/
(as well as other information that might be useful).
Be well.
--
Lowell Gilbert, embedded/networking software engineer
http://be-well.ilk.org/~lowell/ |
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Greg Hennessy
*nix forums addict
Joined: 27 Feb 2005
Posts: 91
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| Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2006 7:49 pm Post subject:
Re: Simple BSD Backup System
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On Tue, 18 Jul 2006 19:06:33 GMT, John Richards
<john.richards280@tesco.net> wrote:
| Quote: | Some of the writers of some of the others perhaps don't realise how
arrogant they sound. Not all of us have C++ on toast for breakfast,
|
I prefer Morrisons wholewheat muesli mixed with half a handful of Grape
Nuts, but I digress.
| Quote: | but it does not mean we are necessarily stupid or have not read and
struggled with the handbook.
|
I fail to see how you would 'struggle' with the handbook or man pages.
Out of all the *nixs out there, I would assert that FreeBSDs is one of, if
not the most clear concise and complete.
No hell of HowTo's, no cobbled together afterthought, and most important of
all, it's consistent.
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/backup-basics.html
Gives you 3 backup options with working examples. It's not rocket science.
It may be not what you are used to, that doesnt make it 'difficult' per-ce.
greg
--
If you want venality, if you want ignorance, if you want drunkenness,
and facility for being intimidated; or if, on the other hand, you
want impulsive, unreflecting, and violent people, where do you look
Do you go to the top or to the bottom? |
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Greg Hennessy
*nix forums addict
Joined: 27 Feb 2005
Posts: 91
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| Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2006 7:49 pm Post subject:
Re: Simple BSD Backup System
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On Tue, 18 Jul 2006 15:10:01 -0400, Lowell Gilbert
<lgusenet@be-well.ilk.org> wrote:
| Quote: | Greg Hennessy <me@privacy.org> writes:
On Tue, 18 Jul 2006 15:14:23 GMT, John Richards <john.richards280@tesco.net> wrote:
Any suggestions?
Yes, RTFMP on dump/restore.
There are cases where it's not the best method of backup, but those
cases, as far as I've seen, are fairly specialized.
|
Databases are the usual culprits.
| Quote: | The complex saving to tape of the
handbook is hardly the same thing at all.
It's neither 'complex' or limited to tape.
True, but on first read-through, either the "Backup Basics -- Dump
and Restore" bit of the Handbook or the dump( manual could lead a
neophyte to think otherwise. It may be time to add an "examples"
section to the dump( manual.
|
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/backup-basics.html
does so already.
| Quote: |
I think dump is probably the best way to back up a Linux system, too.
|
I thought that linus waved his magic wand years ago and said dump was
verboten under penalty of banishment from the gnu garden ?
| Quote: | I don't understand the obsession with getting bit-for-bit copies of
filesystem, even to the point of including the unused space.
|
The only time I would do so is when moving a complete installation en bloc
(pun intended), disk to disk with G4U or a bootable Ghost CD. It's the
quickest and most painless for that sort of task when one has physical
access to the disks.
For standard backups, it's pointless. Especially when one experiences the
inevitable organ in the blender moment and have to do a partial restore.
| Quote: | In fact it's trivial to do proper backups over NFS using dump.
Specifically, the minimal incantation for a full dump is along the
lines of:
# dump -0a -f <output file> <filesystem
and whether "output file" is on an NFS filesystem is completely
unimportant to the dump command.
|
Agreed, but some may not make the connection. Which is why I pointed the OP
at SFU.
We'll give it a blast :-)
greg
--
If you want venality, if you want ignorance, if you want drunkenness,
and facility for being intimidated; or if, on the other hand, you
want impulsive, unreflecting, and violent people, where do you look
Do you go to the top or to the bottom? |
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jpd
*nix forums Guru
Joined: 22 Feb 2005
Posts: 877
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| Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2006 7:53 pm Post subject:
Re: Simple BSD Backup System
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Begin <Ziavg.26277$sz1.1948@newsfe6-gui.ntli.net>
On 2006-07-18, John Richards <john.richards280@tesco.net> wrote:
| Quote: | Some of the writers of some of the others perhaps don't realise how
arrogant they sound.
|
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
--
j p d (at) d s b (dot) t u d e l f t (dot) n l .
This message was originally posted on Usenet in plain text.
Any other representation, additions, or changes do not have my
consent and may be a violation of international copyright law. |
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Howard Goldstein
*nix forums beginner
Joined: 15 Feb 2005
Posts: 22
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| Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2006 9:28 pm Post subject:
Re: Simple BSD Backup System
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On Tue, 18 Jul 2006 15:14:23 GMT, John Richards <john.richards280@tesco.net> wrote:
: I have looked carefully at the Handbook and on Google, but can find no
: simple system for doing a backup of my installation in FreeBSD.
They won't qualify as simple but I like amanda and bacula, even more.
I do however have to back up multiple machines nightly... |
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Bruce Burden
*nix forums addict
Joined: 29 Mar 2005
Posts: 52
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| Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 4:35 am Post subject:
Re: Simple BSD Backup System
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So, now that the dump/restore folks have come out of hiding,
perhaps somebody can tell me the magic incantation for restoring
from a multi-tape image?
I have studied the man pages, I have attempted to restore
my data when the dump image crosses onto a second tape.
What I have not been able to do is determine how to
retrieve my data.
So, currently, when a dump image crosses a tape EOT, I
tell dump "good boy, you can stop now", load a new tape, and
start the dump of the FS all over. Sorta wasteful on tape,
but at least I can retrieve my data...
Thanks,
Bruce
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I like bad!" Bruce Burden Austin, TX.
- Thuganlitha
The Power and the Prophet
Robert Don Hughes |
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John Richards
*nix forums beginner
Joined: 03 Sep 2005
Posts: 23
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| Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 7:13 am Post subject:
Re: Simple BSD Backup System
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jpd wrote:
| Quote: | Begin <Ziavg.26277$sz1.1948@newsfe6-gui.ntli.net
On 2006-07-18, John Richards <john.richards280@tesco.net> wrote:
Some of the writers of some of the others perhaps don't realise how
arrogant they sound.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
|
Yes, I had read that too.
No matter. I realise that you are a member of that very select band of
extremely knowledgeable people who do not suffer fools gladly, so
offence taken. |
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