[NTLUG:Discuss] Backing up an FC6 desktop?

[Daniel Hauck]

Patrick R. Michaud さんは書きました:
> On Mon, Sep 08, 2008 at 03:38:28PM -0500, terry wrote:
>> On Sun, Sep 7, 2008 at 8:34 AM, John K. Taber <jktaber at charter.net> wrote:
>>> Mondo at first looked attractive for backing up my FC6 desktop. But
>>> Googling the forums
>>> reveals that Mondo has a problem with LVM, which I have.
>>>
>>> I like the idea of a bootable backup media (I'm thinking CDs), and
>>> complete restore.
>>>
>>> Any ideas?
>> [...many good suggestions, including the following...]
>> Large enough USB drive:
>>   tar -cvzf /media/disk/home.tgz /home
>>          (after plugging in the device and mounting it under /media/disk )
>>          (this gives you a tar'd and  compressed file containing all
>> user directories and accompaning files)
>> ...
> 
> One can also use rsync with USB or other locally-mounted drives:
> 
>     rsync -av /media/disk/home /home
> 
> A nice advantage of rsync over tar is that once the first rsync
> has been done, one can re-rsync to the usb drive and only the 
> changed files get copied.  It's also easy to get to individual 
> files off the USB disk if desired, instead of having to use tar 
> to search through the entire tar file.  Also you don't end up 
> with a huge .tgz file (which if corrupted early could cause 
> you to lose the entire backup).
> 
> One advantage of tar over rsync is that the data can be archived
> compressed (i.e., the -z option) but that hasn't been an issue
> for me.
> 
> I have a WD Passport 160GB USB drive that I use for exactly this 
> purpose; with rsync it's easy and quick to do backups incrementally, 
> and if I need to take my data with me somewhere I can quickly and
> portably do that.
> 
> Pm

I wonder: are there more advanced backup methods?

I ask this because recently, I have taken to backing up my VMs (as I 
should have been doing all along).  I have figured out how to suspend 
VMs, then back them up by copying them, and resuming.  But the problem 
is that the files are ENORMOUS.  I have mitigated some of the delay in 
time by setting up the external drive as eSATA as opposed to USB. 
(That's another adventure... there are a couple of SATA chip drivers 
that still won't do LBA48... at least not under CentOS 5.2... and this 
particular inic based controller wouldn't even show a drive attached to 
it.  I had to find another card to get the job done... I hate shopping 
around for "compatible" hardware under Linux... I thought I was done 
with that nonsense years ago.)  But my backup process still takes about 
10 to 15 minutes.  It's not a HUGE time to be down, but it's long enough 
that I'd like to see it shortened.

I can't help but think some sort of "Send only the changes to the files" 
backup solution must exist out there somewhere.