[TriLUG] Backing up remote systems

Jeremy P jeremyp at pobox.com
Wed Mar 27 16:50:20 EST 2002


On Wed, 27 Mar 2002, Kevin Hunter wrote:

> 
> I have a handful of web servers that I would like to back up w/ from
> a particular box.  I've found references to rdump and to AMANDA.
> AMANDA seems like a pretty complicated way to deal w/ a simple setup,
> so I'm leaning towards rdump ( except that I hate that it seems to be
> based on rsh which I definately don't want to use ).
> 
> Anyone have tips on how to backup *nix boxes to a remote *nix box?
> Can I tunnel rdump through SSH? 

Yes; by setting up SSH to work as an rsh replacement.  Read the man pages
for SSH, and you'll see that it's well suited for this.  You'll need to
use RSA or DSA authentication (not passwords) for automated operation, but
it's still much more secure than plain-old rsh.  Just configure rdump to
use the appropriate ssh command instead of rsh.

> I'm a big fan of keeping it simple.  I'm even thinking of using a
> cron job to create tar.gz files of what I need to back up and scp'ing
> them down to the box w/ the tape drive?  Does this sound silly ??

No, I know of many people who do this.  Remember that tar itself is the
original backup program -- "tar" stands for "Tape ARchive".  It's well
suited to simple jobs.

Personally I use Arkeia, but that's a commerical program so I shall be
shot for mentioning it here.  
(it is free -- as in beer only -- for small-time users -- www.arkeia.com )

--Jeremy




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