DS-Backup

a simple rsync based backup system

dsbackup uses rsync to take a bandwidth efficient backup of a system via ssh. It is developed by John Leach in bash and is released under v2 of the GPL.

Features

• Super low bandwidth backups due to rsyncs binary delta algorithm
• Secure. Rsync operates over ssh which is encrypted and can be well authenticated
• Keeps a 7 day back archive using hard links to save space on unchanged files.
• Logs all messages and errors to disk and e-mails a summary
• Creates a monthly tar archive of the latest day
• The backups are stored as normal files on the filesystem. No horrible proprietary interface access. Just use cd and cp!

Specification

I currently use dsbackup to keep a backup of several RedHat ES servers hosted offsite, with only a low bandwidth link between them and the dedicated backup machine. I regularly need to restore individual files from the backups and prefer not to have to stream through gigs of tape archives to get them.

The Amanda and Backula backup systems seem great, but wasted an awful lot of bandwidth. They were also rather complicated to use (for me anyway) and I felt I didn't have enough control over the backup and restore procress.

Issues

Rsync must be run as root on the backup machine in order to preserve user/group ids and permissions. I recommend using a dedicated backup machine with no other users on it.

Download

The current version is 0.1 and can be found in the download directory.

The documentation is still in progress but it should be enough to get you going.

$Date: 2004-01-31 16:13:03 +0000 (Sat, 31 Jan 2004) $
Copyright (c) John Leach <john at johnleach dot co dot uk >