Re: [Duplicity-talk] Restore question

[Dylan Martin]

It sounds like "never back up something that comes on an install disk"
might be a best practice.

My problem with that is, I have a hard time keeping track of what is
unchanged from the install disk and what isn't.  I used to only back
up user data and not system data, but then I had a real crash, and
suddenly all those little changes, installed packages and whatnot come
to the fore.  If I was organised enough, I could make some sort of a
snapshot of the initial install state and then backup only the delta.
Of course, that relies on knowing exactly which packages I installed
at the beginning.
So, you see what I'm getting at here, there's a lot of opportunities
to screw up.

As a sysadmin with scars, I can say that a backup system is only as
good as it's restore system.  When I say system here, I don't mean
duplicity, I mean the entire process (boot media, duplicity, attaching
to restore media etc.. etc...)  A restore system should be simple and
quick and foolproof.  When you're restoring data, you're usually
stressed out, tired, possibly drunk, maybe even talking someone else
through the process over a telephone and the other person is the night
janitor who's never used a computer before and you don't have a first
language in common.

Er... I think that was kindof a tangent, but an important one in it's way.

So, I'd be very interested in learning about other people's restore practices.

-Dylan

On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 6:08 PM, Kenneth Loafman <address@hidden> wrote:
> I don't have a best practices for an entire system as such.  It's been
> years since I've backed up even an entire filesystem, much less a full
> disk.  My policy has been to never back up something that comes on an
> install disk, so the only things I ever back up are data, configuration
> files, and settings files.  Generally that amounts to less than half of
> the files actually on the system.
>
> Maybe someone else can fill in the blanks on this question.
>
> ...Ken
>
> Dylan Martin wrote:
>> Is there any kind of a best practices scenario for restoring an entire
>> system?  How is it supposed to work in the ideal situation?
>>
>> On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 4:25 AM, Kenneth Loafman <address@hidden> wrote:
>>> I doubt you have the paradigm wrong, but duplicity does try to do things
>>> in a safe manner, so restoring over existing files is not normal for it.
>>>
>>> ...Ken
>>>
>>> Dylan Martin wrote:
>>>> Thank you!
>>>>
>>>> Am I doing something unusual?  I would have thought what I was doing
>>>> was common place.  This makes me worry that I'm doing it wrong, IE I
>>>> have the wrong paradigm in my head.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks again!
>>>> -Dylan
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 5:27 PM, Kenneth Loafman <address@hidden> wrote:
>>>>> Dylan Martin wrote:
>>>>>> Hi, I've recently started using duplicity and today I'm trying to do
>>>>>> my first restore.  I'm attempting to restore an entire machine.  I'm
>>>>>> accustomed to using tar.  While not technically correct, the
>>>>>> simplified story is I've booted to a CD, partitioned out my disk,
>>>>>> formatted the filesystems and mounted them all and now I'm trying to
>>>>>> restore.  This means there are existing directories within the
>>>>>> filesystem, but duplicity gets angry about overwriting existing files.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> To clarify, I have a destination dir /mnt/machine.  Within that are
>>>>>> mount points for /mnt/machine/usr, /mnt/machine/var etc...  If I try
>>>>>> to restore to /mnt/machine, duplicity exits and says it won't
>>>>>> overwrite an existing file.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Here's the duplicity command I'm running (minus --scp-command,
>>>>>> --sftp-command, actual host names etc..)
>>>>>> I can get a collection status, so I know my sftp/scp stuff is working.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> duplicity -v9 --no-encryption scp://address@hidden/duplicity /mnt/foo
>>>>>>
>>>>>> How does one restore an entire machine with multiple mount points?
>>>>> Add the --force option to allow duplicity to overwrite existing files
>>>>> and directories.
>>>>>
>>>>> ...Ken
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
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