> ..my idea is use cvs as a data backup server engine to _promptly_
> back up whatever new file is saved, to cvs, and instead do
> the backup to the tape, off the cvs "code" base, rather than
> the traditional way, full, incremental, differential etc, off
> the file systems, every hour, day, week etc.
Quite a lot of work to be done here!
You'll have to ...
1. ... discover whenever a file has been modified, WITHOUT polling
it. You'll probably have to modify an existing filesystem (or write
your own) to do this.
2. ... be able to make a difference between "saving" and "writing to"
a file. It makes sense to backup a file when a user saves a document
from an application, but it's not a good idea to do this for files
whenever they get written to -- you would end up with a commit for
each line written to a log file, for example!
3. ... make sure you handle user permissions. If you use more-or-less
plain CVS, you would have to store all backup files with the same
permissions -- first, you'll have to store their permissions with them
somehow, then you would have to create your web-to-cvs interface so
that it only allows access to the user's files, that means the user
will have to type their password in the browser.
4. ... take care of expiry -- if you store all versions of all files,
you'll inevitably run out of space, and this is bound to happen at the
worst moment possible.
> ..pointers to anyone who beat me to this idea is _much_ appreciated,
> as are pointers to resources telling me I'm an idiot thinking this
> is possible. Thank you anyway. :-)
Seems like a good idea, and one that would probably make you famous
(you could probably even make money off it, like some people do with
PHP4 and MySQL, both widely used open-source projects). Implementing
it on top of CVS seems a bit of a suicide mission though -- it looks a
lot easier to take an open-source filesystem (which MUST have
journalling AND access control lists if you're serious about it), and
build your backup functionality into it.
While you're at it, make it network-transparent with encryption and
authentication a la kerberos.
I might have some more ideas in the future (I've thought about
redundant filesystems before, mainly because there is no really
useable shared and redundant filesystem on the open-source market
today), let's see.
Andras
===========================================================================
Major Andras
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
www: http://andras.webhop.org/
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