Re: [gentoo-user] Back up a server in real-time

[William Kenworthy <billk@iinet.net.au>]

It actually does a very fast, space efficient backup management.

As for restore, each backup is effectively an uncompressed fully
accessible mirror image so you can manually copy/tar/... etc back for
the full system, or individual files.  The developers basically say we
have a working backup system where you can restore using standard tools
if needed, but we'll make it easier when we can get around to it.

Having versioned backups can be REALLY handy at times.  Space efficiency
typically stabilises at 2x archive size depending on delta.

Downside it can hammer a disk - reiserfs is fine but ext2/3 was flaky.

moriah ~ # esearch dirvish
[ Results for search key : dirvish ]
[ Applications found : 1 ]

*  app-backup/dirvish
      Latest version available: 1.2.1
      Latest version installed: 1.2.1
      Size of downloaded files: [no/bad digest]
      Homepage:    http://www.dirvish.org/
      Description: Dirvish is a fast, disk based, rotating network
backup system.
      License:     OSL-2.0

Its worth a read on how its done - using smarts rather than brute force!

BillK

On Sun, 2008-11-16 at 11:58 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On Sunday 16 November 2008 11:04:41 William Kenworthy wrote:
> > dirvish is in portage.
> >
> > tar/rsync/cp are not really backups but manual copies.  If you want true
> > backup you need scripts to handle the extra functionality for things
> > like versioning, archive management and the all important restore.
> >
> > Dirvish is excellent on all but restore.
> 
> Which raises the question:
> 
> What's the point of it then?
> 
> OTOH, it has to be better than legato. Nothing could be worse than legato.
> 
> 
-- 
William Kenworthy <billk@iinet.net.au>
Home in Perth!