Merlin Beedell wrote: > > CVS sounds like a possible solution to the following scenario: > > We are currently looking at backing up our main [file] servers to a remote > site's hard disk. The requirements are: > All files to be copied to the remote site just once (i.e. so that 200Gb does > not get transferred every night/week or month over broadband connection). > From then on we only need to back up new or changed files. > For Changed files, we need to keep up to 3 (or a configurable number of) > prior versions > We need to see a simple report showing backup completion and any issues on > the way > > To restore, we need to be able to easily select a file from a directory > structure on the backup machine, and choose the most recent or one of the > previous versions. > > I don't know of any backup software that runs quite like this (does anyone?). > Clearly CVS would just be a component of such a system - yet it seems so > possible that it really aught to be attempted. The key part is in a simple > interfaces for > - selecting servers and directories that should be backed up > - a scheduler > - a reporter > - a restore interface. > > Am I being mad, or are there loads of existing products that do this, or does > this sound like a great idea?
Sounds like you really want to keep your backups in a VMS filesystem[1], which some might claim indicate you to be heading for madness. I thought there was a project to provide a VMS filesystem for linux, but I can't find it quickly. Curiosity question, how many VMS folks you got there? If ALL of your files are _ASCII text_ then you might be able to implement what you want with CVS, but otherwise I highly suggest abandoning that idea. There are several open source backup solutions available[2], AMANDA[3] backing up to a disk, with some extra tools[4], seems the most likely to me to come close to what you want. In February someone discussed doing what you are suggesting with (or on) Subversion[5]. If you could live with one backup, but have that backup in live hot real time, you might want to look at DRBD[6]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenVMS_filesystem http://www.panix.com/~kingdon/free-vms.html http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Filesystems-HOWTO-9.html#ss9.19 [2] http://freshmeat.net/search/?q=backup§ion=projects&Go.x=0&Go.y=0 [3] http://amanda.sourceforge.net/ [4] http://freshmeat.net/search/?q=amanda§ion=projects&Go.x=0&Go.y=0 [5] http://svn.haxx.se/users/archive-2005-02/0892.shtml [6] http://www.drbd.org/ -- Todd Denniston Crane Division, Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC Crane) Harnessing the Power of Technology for the Warfighter _______________________________________________ Info-cvs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-cvs
