Re: [PLUG] Best Solution for Multiple Volume Backups

[Steve Litt via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>]

On Fri, 17 Jul 2020 19:36:28 -0400
Rich Freeman <r-plug@thefreemanclan.net> wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 17, 2020 at 2:29 PM Steve Litt via plug
> <plug@lists.phillylinux.org> wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, 14 Jul 2020 15:53:36 -0400
> > Rich Freeman via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org> wrote:
> >  
> > >
> > > I don't think it supports multiple volumes (that is, the backup
> > > spans more than one disk/etc), and I don't want to mess around
> > > with RAID and so on to try to merge devices even where this is
> > > supportable.
> > >
> > > If it weren't for that there are actually a lot of solutions like
> > > duplicity, restic, rsnapshot, rsync, and so on...  
> >
> > I'm not sure why doing multiple disks, or volumes, etc, on a single
> > backup, is so important.  
> 
> It isn't, though most backup tools including the ones I just commented
> on support it.
> 
> I'm not trying to backup multiple disks on a single backup.  I'm
> trying to store one backup across multiple disks.
> 
> Eg, I have 16TB of data to backup, and I have a couple of 8TB drives
> to store it on.

Ohhhhhhhhh!

I completely see the importance. I lack that capability, and it's been
a PITA for years because of that.

I hadn't thought of this until you brought it up, but how bout
something like the following:

tar -Mczf --exclude=pattern /mnt/flashdrive /backuptree

More detail at
https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-tape-backup-with-mt-and-tar-command-howto/

By the way, man tar doesn't list the -M option, but if you 
tar --help | less it shows the -M to be "multi volume".

Of course, the preceding requires placing the files to be backed up in
/backuptree. Perhaps that's best done with hard links for major
directories.

Like I said, I never thought of this til you reiterated the problem, so
it requires more thought, but it might work.

As a humorous aside, my backups consist of about 6 .tgz files, so a
decade and a half ago I created a Ruby program to best-fit them onto
DVDs. Bar-baric!

If you do the -M thing, I'd love to hear the details of how you did it.

Thanks,
 
SteveT

Steve Litt 
May 2020 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques
     of the Successful Technologist
http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques
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