Re: [9fans] advice? fossil+venti (p9), vbackup+venti (p9p) vs. some other means of backup

[Anthony Sorace <a@9srv.net>]

> Does anybody rely on a backup scheme using, say,
> vbackup+venti on linux? Does it work well, or would
> you recomment other means of doing a backup?

Not precisely what you're asking, but likely close enough experience to be useful:

When last I was responsible for a bunch of unix boxes, I was using venti for backup. I started off using vbackup, but switched to something vac-based pretty quickly. I realized there was a ton of data on there that I didn't feel the need to keep backed up (the OS itself, but more significantly nearly a TB of transcoded video (we kept the source backed up)). Also, I don't think I could get at the vbackup images from Plan 9; the vac ones work fine, with some oddities based on file system differences. These were OS X systems, but I was just using stock p9p stuff; it should run fine on linux. I was sending to a remote venti running on Plan 9.

Using vac instead of vbackup increases your recovery time (you have to reinstall the OS & tools, and in my case we'd have to re-transcode the video), but we had a warm spare and RAID to guard agains simple disk failures; this was mostly for genuine disaster recovery (although being able to mount and cd around my backup history from my Plan 9 workstation was a huge benefit).

I also ran something similar on my laptop. I've stopped using that regularly in favor of Time Machine, but still use it as an occasional one-off for disaster recovery (although it's not off-site).

> I guess there are also people using fossil+venti on
> p9. Are those happy?

Yes, quite. Ever since someone (Richard Miller, I think) tracked down that persistent snapshot hang bug, it's been great. Most of the complaining about fossil's stability comes from outdated info. The fossil+venti combo isn't the fastest option (Erik's kenfs kicks ass there), but the tradeoffs work well for my needs.

> I am looking for a sustainable means of backup,
> mainly on linux, and am avaluating different options
> (rdiff-backup, rsnapshot, dump/restore, rdup...)

I would use this system again if I had unix servers I cared about. For my MacBook, Time Machine gets the edge mostly because it's automatic.

This is not quite the latest version, but you can take a look at /n/sources/contrib/anothy/bin/rc/vacbak. You can also take a look at .../anothy/lib/tet.(cron files xfiles) for examples of config files I used on a system called tet.

You're reminding me I've been meaning to come up with an off-site backup plan for my system, which I haven't had in a few years...