[Leaplist] duplicity recommendation

[John Simpson]

On 2008-01-12, at 1538, Dan Cherry wrote:
>
> I've been doing my backups with tar over ssh, and started looking  
> into rsync.
> Debian admin mentioned a pkg called 'duplicity' which uses rsync.
> Anyone with experience using 'duplicity', care to comment on whether  
> it's
> worked for them, or if there are any drawbacks (or showstoppers)?

no... i'm using rsync within ssh. http://www.jms1.net/code/rsync-backup.shtml 
  has the details. (this page has been sitting there, half-written,  
for months... your question prompted me to finally finish it. thank  
you.)

i remember looking at duplicity in the past. for me, the big advantage  
would be the encryption of the backups. however, since i control both  
the machine being backed up AND the machine which is pulling the  
backups, i don't have a real need for encrypted backups.

i also like the fact that, if i have a real need, i can ssh to the  
backup machine (which is in my house) and access individual files from  
within the backed-up image. this allows me to quickly restore  
individual files, as well as access large files from the server  
without having to scp them back across the wire again- they're already  
inside the house, so i can access them at 100Mb ethernet speed.

one advantage of doing what i'm doing is that i'm "pulling" the  
backups using a script on the backup repository machine, rather than  
the server itself "pushing" the backups to some other box. looking at  
the documentation...

from http://duplicity.nongnu.org/duplicity.1.html , "Examples",  
example #4:

> Duplicity enters restore mode because the URL comes before the local  
> directory.


to me, this says that the URL (i.e. the remote server) MUST BE the  
backup archive, and the local directory MUST BE the files you with to  
back up.

the way i do it, the scripting runs on the backup repository machine-  
the only thing it requires on the production servers is sshd and the  
rsync package. my script "pulls" the files, which means that the  
backup server has access to the live server. to me it makes more  
sense, and "feels" more secure, because the backup server can be  
behind a NAT'ed cable modem connection somewhere, where the outside  
world can't get into it. the live server has to be on the outside in  
order to do its job- a dedicated backup machine doesn't.

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| John M. Simpson    ---   KG4ZOW   ---    Programmer At Large |
| http://www.jms1.net/                         <jms1 at jms1.net> |
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| http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1656880303867390173 |
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