Hi Is anybody interested in incremental backups for their devices? If so, please look at rdiff-backup: http://www.nongnu.org/rdiff-backup/ I found it quite easy to use and powerful. Most attractive features from my point of view are: - supports incremental backups and restores - Stores only binary diffs, so storage and bandwidth efficient - Easy to configure and use - Works on Unix/Linux, Windows, MAC OS X Now a bit of configuration details : Requirements: device to backup (I used N800) PC with Linux or Windows ssh connection from PC to device Packages for N800: Python (I used maemo python2.5 build from bora repository) http://www.bartosh.org/files/librsync1_0.9.7-1_armel.deb http://www.bartosh.org/files/rdiff-backup_1.0.5-1.maemo1_armel.deb Exactly the same version (1.0.5) Rdiff-backup installed on the PC My Testing environment: device: N800 Old Redhat9-based system as a backup storage. I used this howto as a configuration guide: http://www.howtoforge.net/linux_rdiff_backup My configuration files: PC side: Ssh configuration: ~/.ssh/config host n800-backup hostname 192.168.255.2 user rdiff-backup identityfile ~/.ssh/id_dsa compression yes protocol 2 Backup shell script: #!/bin/sh time rdiff-backup --terminal-verbosity 5 --exclude /dev --exclude /sys --exclude /proc --exclude /initrd --exclude /mnt/ --exclude /media n800-backup::/ ./backup N800 side: # grep rdiff-backup /etc/passwd rdiff-backup:!:30003:100::/home/rdiff-backup: # grep rdiff-backup /etc/sudoers rdiff-backup ALL = NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/rdiff-backup --server --restrict-read-only / # cat /home/rdiff-backup/.ssh/authorized_keys command="sudo /usr/bin/rdiff-backup --server --restrict-read-only /",no-port-forwarding,no-X11-forwarding,no-pty ssh-dss <public key> Couple of examples: Usual backup session: [ed at ed n800]$ ./backup.sh Executing ssh -C n800-backup rdiff-backup --server Unable to import module xattr. Extended attributes not supported on filesystem at / ----------------------------------------------------------------- Detected abilities for source (read only) file system: Access control lists Off Extended attributes Off Mac OS X style resource forks Off Mac OS X Finder information Off ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unable to import module posix1e from pylibacl package. ACLs not supported on filesystem at / Unable to import module xattr. Extended attributes not supported on filesystem at backup/rdiff-backup-data/rdiff-backup.tmp.0 Unable to import module posix1e from pylibacl package. ACLs not supported on filesystem at backup/rdiff-backup-data/rdiff-backup.tmp.0 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Detected abilities for destination (read/write) file system: Characters needing quoting '' Ownership changing Off Hard linking On fsync() directories On Directory inc permissions On High-bit permissions On Access control lists Off Extended attributes Off Mac OS X style resource forks Off Mac OS X Finder information Off ----------------------------------------------------------------- Starting increment operation / to backup Processing changed file . Incrementing mirror file backup Processing changed file etc Incrementing mirror file backup/etc <a lot of linex skipped> Processing changed file var/log/wtmp Incrementing mirror file backup/var/log/wtmp Processing changed file var/tmp Incrementing mirror file backup/var/tmp real 2m38.161s user 0m8.470s sys 0m0.310s List of incremental backups: [ed at ed n800]$ rdiff-backup --list-increments ./backup Found 7 increments: increments.2007-05-06T21:28:16+03:00.dir Sun May 6 21:28:16 2007 increments.2007-05-07T00:18:33+03:00.dir Mon May 7 00:18:33 2007 increments.2007-05-07T00:22:19+03:00.dir Mon May 7 00:22:19 2007 increments.2007-05-07T00:30:42+03:00.dir Mon May 7 00:30:42 2007 increments.2007-05-07T22:45:24+03:00.dir Mon May 7 22:45:24 2007 increments.2007-05-09T21:25:18+03:00.dir Wed May 9 21:25:18 2007 increments.2007-05-20T18:57:33+03:00.dir Sun May 20 18:57:33 2007 Current mirror: Sat Jun 2 23:11:29 2007 List of changed files since 1 week: [ed at ed n800]$ rdiff-backup --list-changed-since 1W ./backup |wc -l 311 Enjoy! -- Best regards, Ed
