backing up shadow files with rsync?
 

How would you back up /etc/passwd and its shadow file (and the same for
/etc/groups) using rsync?

In my case, I have a USB drive to back stuff up to. I already have a
cron job, backing up /home

And then, for my documentation, how would I restore the shadow files?

This is to provide for disaster recovery (which I am in the middle of
right now without proper backups...).


--
users mailing list
users@lists.fedoraproject.org
To unsubscribe or change subscription options:
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users
Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines

backing up shadow files with rsync?
 

On Wednesday, February 16, 2011 09:23:56 am Robert Moskowitz wrote:
> How would you back up /etc/passwd and its shadow file (and the same for
> /etc/groups) using rsync?

Why can't you just rsync the whole /etc directory ? That what I do.

> In my case, I have a USB drive to back stuff up to. I already have a
> cron job, backing up /home
>
> And then, for my documentation, how would I restore the shadow files?

Just copy it back from the backup ?

Am I missing something from your questions ?

AC
--
users mailing list
users@lists.fedoraproject.org
To unsubscribe or change subscription options:
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users
Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines

backing up shadow files with rsync?
 

On 02/16/2011 09:23 AM, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
> How would you back up /etc/passwd and its shadow file (and the same for
> /etc/groups) using rsync?
>
> In my case, I have a USB drive to back stuff up to. I already have a
> cron job, backing up /home
>
> And then, for my documentation, how would I restore the shadow files?
>
> This is to provide for disaster recovery (which I am in the middle of
> right now without proper backups...).
>
>

If it disaster recovery you may want to backup entire root anyway ...
certainly /etc /var

I would also suggest you use rdiff-backup and not rsync - that way you
will have history of changes - and if the disaster is /etc/shadow got
turned to 0 byte file - having a backup of earlier versions is vital.
rdiff-backup leaves you a browsable top level directory of files of the
current snapshot - (just like a rsync backup would) but has the ability
to build older revs too.


I cron trim my rdiff-backups to 3, 6 or 12 months depending on which
partition (directory whatever) it is.

You then need to decide on backup frequency - it may vary from minutes
or hours to daily .. again depending. I run key backups every 1 to 2
hours and otherwise nightly. The cost of hourly's is low if the change
volume is not too rapid.

gene
--
users mailing list
users@lists.fedoraproject.org
To unsubscribe or change subscription options:
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users
Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines

backing up shadow files with rsync?
 

On Wed, 2011-02-16 at 11:27 -0500, Genes MailLists wrote:
> I would also suggest you use rdiff-backup and not rsync - that way
> you
> will have history of changes - and if the disaster is /etc/shadow got
> turned to 0 byte file - having a backup of earlier versions is vital.
> rdiff-backup leaves you a browsable top level directory of files of
> the
> current snapshot - (just like a rsync backup would) but has the
> ability
> to build older revs too.

I'd just like to put in a word for rsnapshot, which has similar
properties.

poc

--
users mailing list
users@lists.fedoraproject.org
To unsubscribe or change subscription options:
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users
Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines

backing up shadow files with rsync?
 

On Wed, 16 Feb 2011 12:00:13 -0430
Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:

> I'd just like to put in a word for rsnapshot, which has similar
> properties.

Heck, I just use rsync with the --backup and --backup-dir options.
--
users mailing list
users@lists.fedoraproject.org
To unsubscribe or change subscription options:
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users
Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines

backing up shadow files with rsync?
 

On 02/16/2011 10:07 AM, Armelius Cameron wrote:
> On Wednesday, February 16, 2011 09:23:56 am Robert Moskowitz wrote:
>> How would you back up /etc/passwd and its shadow file (and the same for
>> /etc/groups) using rsync?
> Why can't you just rsync the whole /etc directory ? That what I do.

Well I was 'cherry picking'. /etc has ~2300 files for 46Mb.

If I use the --backup and NOT the --backup-dir I will probably only see
a one-time hit of lots of files.

>> In my case, I have a USB drive to back stuff up to. I already have a
>> cron job, backing up /home
>>
>> And then, for my documentation, how would I restore the shadow files?
> Just copy it back from the backup ?
>
> Am I missing something from your questions ?

It was could you access the password shadow file as root, and a bit of
looking, I see you can.


--
users mailing list
users@lists.fedoraproject.org
To unsubscribe or change subscription options:
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users
Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines

backing up shadow files with rsync?
 

On 02/16/2011 11:50 AM, Tom Horsley wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Feb 2011 12:00:13 -0430
> Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
>
>> I'd just like to put in a word for rsnapshot, which has similar
>> properties.
>
> Heck, I just use rsync with the --backup and --backup-dir options.

Interesting - that essentially has same functionality as rsnapshot -
thanks for sharing and is presumably faster - but has the same drawbacks
versus rdiff-backup (which is slower for sure).
--
users mailing list
users@lists.fedoraproject.org
To unsubscribe or change subscription options:
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users
Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines

backing up shadow files with rsync?
 

On Wed, 2011-02-16 at 11:50 -0500, Tom Horsley wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Feb 2011 12:00:13 -0430
> Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
>
> > I'd just like to put in a word for rsnapshot, which has similar
> > properties.
>
> Heck, I just use rsync with the --backup and --backup-dir options.

Rsnapshot is just a useful front-end to rsync. It keeps snapshots of an
entire tree ordered by backup generation (using hard links to avoid
duplicating files). This is similar to Apple's Time Machine, except that
it doesn't hard-link to directories for obvious reasons (Apple changed
the filesystem to allow such links in this specific application). And of
course it doesn't preserve the original hard link count of files if it's
different from 1. Whatever floats your boat.

poc

--
users mailing list
users@lists.fedoraproject.org
To unsubscribe or change subscription options:
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users
Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines

backing up shadow files with rsync?
 

On Wed, 2011-02-16 at 13:45 -0430, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> Rsnapshot is just a useful front-end to rsync. It keeps snapshots of
> an entire tree ordered by backup generation (using hard links to avoid
> duplicating files).

If you link, instead of duplicating, then you only have one backup of a
file. So, if that backup has a problem...?

Did I miss something obvious?

--
[tim@localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.27.25-78.2.56.fc9.i686

Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored. I
read messages from the public lists.



--
users mailing list
users@lists.fedoraproject.org
To unsubscribe or change subscription options:
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users
Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines

backing up shadow files with rsync?
 

On Thu, 2011-02-17 at 11:09 +1030, Tim wrote:
> On Wed, 2011-02-16 at 13:45 -0430, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> > Rsnapshot is just a useful front-end to rsync. It keeps snapshots of
> > an entire tree ordered by backup generation (using hard links to avoid
> > duplicating files).
>
> If you link, instead of duplicating, then you only have one backup of a
> file. So, if that backup has a problem...?
>
> Did I miss something obvious?

You pays your money and you takes your choice. If you want every backup
of your 10GB home directory to take up another 10GB of space, go for it.
Most people don't actually want that. They assume (naively or not) that
the backup medium is itself sufficiently reliable, for example I'm doing
it on a NAS configured with mirrored disks, which is fine for my
purposes. YMMV of course.

Here's a listing of the current space occupancy:

$ sudo rsnapshot du
28G /storage/Backups/rsnapshot/daily.0/
7.5G /storage/Backups/rsnapshot/daily.1/
2.8G /storage/Backups/rsnapshot/daily.2/
430M /storage/Backups/rsnapshot/daily.3/
1.1G /storage/Backups/rsnapshot/daily.4/
431M /storage/Backups/rsnapshot/daily.5/
437M /storage/Backups/rsnapshot/daily.6/
523M /storage/Backups/rsnapshot/weekly.0/
16G /storage/Backups/rsnapshot/weekly.1/
11G /storage/Backups/rsnapshot/weekly.2/
571M /storage/Backups/rsnapshot/weekly.3/
4.0G /storage/Backups/rsnapshot/monthly.0/
37G /storage/Backups/rsnapshot/monthly.1/
3.5G /storage/Backups/rsnapshot/monthly.2/
112G total

(Each number is a delta from the previous one). So I'm using 112G
instead of 400G or so. Plus the nightly backup is done in around 30
minutes. Works for me, and I actually had a disk failure on the NAS but
since it's mirrored I could keep going while getting a replacement.

In the end it's all a matter of cost (in the broadest sense) vs benefit,
which you have to work out for yourself.

poc

--
users mailing list
users@lists.fedoraproject.org
To unsubscribe or change subscription options:
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users
Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines