{"id":552,"date":"2007-05-08T08:26:40","date_gmt":"2007-05-08T13:26:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2007\/05\/08\/rdiff-backup-is-my-backup-tool-of-choice"},"modified":"2007-05-08T08:27:19","modified_gmt":"2007-05-08T13:27:19","slug":"rdiff-backup-is-my-backup-tool-of-choice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2007\/05\/08\/rdiff-backup-is-my-backup-tool-of-choice","title":{"rendered":"rdiff-backup is my backup tool of choice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I decided to actually get backups going. I know, <em>laugh<\/em>. But I bet that when you snicker, you may also not have a great backup system in place.<\/p>\n<p>Picked up a 160GB 2.5&#8243; disk and an external casing. After careful calculation, it seems like maybe I could have saved money buying a pre-packaged solution. Weird.<\/p>\n<p>Anyways, the tool of choice &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nongnu.org\/rdiff-backup\/\">rdiff-backup<\/a>. Its simply dead easy to use. Just do: <tt>rdiff-backup &lt;current&gt; &lt;backup-path&gt;<\/tt>. My initial backup of about 56GB of my home directory, it took just under 2 hours for the first ever backup image.<\/p>\n<p>Restore is something a lot of folk seem to forget. They make great backups, but never test restores. I went cold turkey &#8211; moved from Fedora to Ubuntu after a backup. It worked.<\/p>\n<p>Only real problem is that in Fedora, I had uid\/gid 500, but in Ubuntu, I was uid\/gid 1000. That&#8217;s easily fixable, I restored (<tt>rdiff-backup -r<\/tt>), and I have my environment exactly as per before the format (and distribution switch).<\/p>\n<p>I probably should try to do these backups daily, and maybe have even more that one drive for backups, but this is me being very appreciative of rdiff-backup. Today I ran it again after over a week.<\/p>\n<pre>time rdiff-backup \/home\/byte\/ \/media\/disk\/byte\/\r\n\r\nreal    288m40.943s<\/pre>\n<pre>user    52m1.951s<\/pre>\n<pre>sys     12m57.641s<\/pre>\n<p>rdiff-backup also works over the network. Those dreamhost accounts are now starting to look very interesting for off-site storage. Read the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nongnu.org\/rdiff-backup\/docs.html\">documentation<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nongnu.org\/rdiff-backup\/examples.html\">examples<\/a> if you&#8217;re wanting to get up to speed really quickly. Its also OS X compatible. Now if only I found a sensible Windows backup system&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Technorati Tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/backup\" class=\"performancingtags\" rel=\"tag\">backup<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/rdiff-backup\" class=\"performancingtags\" rel=\"tag\">rdiff-backup<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/restore\" class=\"performancingtags\" rel=\"tag\">restore<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/unix\" class=\"performancingtags\" rel=\"tag\">unix<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/linux\" class=\"performancingtags\" rel=\"tag\">linux<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/macosx\" class=\"performancingtags\" rel=\"tag\">macosx<\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled\"><div class=\"robots-nocontent sd-block sd-social sd-social-icon-text sd-sharing\"><h3 class=\"sd-title\">Share this:<\/h3><div class=\"sd-content\"><ul><li class=\"share-email\"><a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" data-shared=\"\" class=\"share-email sd-button share-icon\" href=\"mailto:?subject=%5BShared%20Post%5D%20rdiff-backup%20is%20my%20backup%20tool%20of%20choice&body=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bytebot.net%2Fblog%2Farchives%2F2007%2F05%2F08%2Frdiff-backup-is-my-backup-tool-of-choice&share=email\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click to email a link to a friend\" data-email-share-error-title=\"Do you have email set up?\" data-email-share-error-text=\"If you&#039;re having problems sharing via email, you might not have email set up for your browser. 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I know, laugh. But I bet that when you snicker, you may also not have a great backup system in place. Picked up a 160GB 2.5&#8243; disk and an external casing. After careful calculation, it seems like maybe I could have saved money buying a pre-packaged solution. Weird. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<div class=\"sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled\"><div class=\"robots-nocontent sd-block sd-social sd-social-icon-text sd-sharing\"><h3 class=\"sd-title\">Share this:<\/h3><div class=\"sd-content\"><ul><li class=\"share-email\"><a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" data-shared=\"\" class=\"share-email sd-button share-icon\" href=\"mailto:?subject=%5BShared%20Post%5D%20rdiff-backup%20is%20my%20backup%20tool%20of%20choice&body=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bytebot.net%2Fblog%2Farchives%2F2007%2F05%2F08%2Frdiff-backup-is-my-backup-tool-of-choice&share=email\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click to email a link to a friend\" data-email-share-error-title=\"Do you have email set up?\" data-email-share-error-text=\"If you&#039;re having problems sharing via email, you might not have email set up for your browser. You may need to create a new email yourself.\" data-email-share-nonce=\"d9a98018b7\" data-email-share-track-url=\"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2007\/05\/08\/rdiff-backup-is-my-backup-tool-of-choice?share=email\"><span>Email<\/span><\/a><\/li><li class=\"share-facebook\"><a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" data-shared=\"sharing-facebook-552\" class=\"share-facebook sd-button share-icon\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2007\/05\/08\/rdiff-backup-is-my-backup-tool-of-choice?share=facebook\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click to share on Facebook\" ><span>Facebook<\/span><\/a><\/li><li class=\"share-linkedin\"><a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" data-shared=\"sharing-linkedin-552\" class=\"share-linkedin sd-button share-icon\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2007\/05\/08\/rdiff-backup-is-my-backup-tool-of-choice?share=linkedin\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click to share on LinkedIn\" ><span>LinkedIn<\/span><\/a><\/li><li class=\"share-twitter\"><a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" data-shared=\"sharing-twitter-552\" class=\"share-twitter sd-button share-icon\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2007\/05\/08\/rdiff-backup-is-my-backup-tool-of-choice?share=twitter\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click to share on Twitter\" ><span>Twitter<\/span><\/a><\/li><li class=\"share-end\"><\/li><\/ul><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4vJD-8U","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":754,"url":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2008\/03\/22\/time-machine-best-backup-option-on-leopard","url_meta":{"origin":552,"position":0},"title":"Time Machine best backup option on Leopard?","date":"22\/3\/2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Dear Lazyweb,Is the best way to backup Mac OS X Leopard, Time Machine? Will it give me full, reliable restores, in case all goes to hell?On Linux, I use rdiff-backup, which is a phenomenal tool, that is quick and easy to use from the command line. Its restores are proven\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":681,"url":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2007\/12\/09\/fedora-8-on-the-dell-inspiron-640m","url_meta":{"origin":552,"position":1},"title":"Fedora 8 on the Dell Inspiron 640m","date":"9\/12\/2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been harsh when it comes to Linux on laptops. Simply put, the week before going to foss.in (i.e. last week), I got tired with my tried daily usage of Ubuntu (besides, I went through Feisty Fawn and Gutsy Gibbon). So I went with Fedora 8. You've got to love\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3294,"url":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2016\/11\/28\/cleaning-up-the-mac-backup-edition","url_meta":{"origin":552,"position":2},"title":"Cleaning up the Mac, backup edition","date":"28\/11\/2016","format":false,"excerpt":"A while back, I realised that com.apple.bird was getting too large and it was easy to purge it. I had to do this again. The app I use to see where my space is going is OmniDiskSweeper. Its free, and I highly recommend it. I use Arq to handle backups\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Tech&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":939,"url":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2008\/08\/13\/fixing-time-machine-backup-failed-with-error-11","url_meta":{"origin":552,"position":3},"title":"Fixing Time Machine: Backup failed with error: 11","date":"13\/8\/2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Got the dreaded \"Backup failed with error: 11\" with Time Machine. Actually, I only got the dreaded message from the Console - the application itself, just kept failing silently with no suggestions (Apple, this is your cue to make Time Machine a little more useful). Nothing in Apple's knowledgebase. Nothing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":110,"url":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2004\/04\/23\/new-box-evolution-backups","url_meta":{"origin":552,"position":4},"title":"New box; Evolution backups","date":"23\/4\/2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Yay, Fedora installed super-quickly on the spanking new box that I have here - the new albus. Everything \"just works\", just think I'm missing the PC speaker sound - could be an hardware issue, but I'm back to using a desktop again. Evolution is a bit of a pain I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":743,"url":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2008\/03\/12\/zimbra-puts-hot-backups-for-oss-edition-to-a-vote","url_meta":{"origin":552,"position":5},"title":"Zimbra puts hot backups for OSS edition to a vote","date":"12\/3\/2008","format":false,"excerpt":"One thing I've found limiting in Zimbra, is the fact that the hot backup is only available in the Network Edition (which costs money). I remember the pain in upgrading Zimbra, and it would have been great if there was a hot backup with an easy restore feature. Now, they're\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}