[CentOS] BackupPC: two newbie questions

[Timothy Murphy]

S.Tindall wrote:

>> 1. Will BackupPC backup files in NFS-mounted directories?
>> If so, is there any simple way of preventing this?
> 
> Not sure I understand the question, but I assume you are talking about
> backing up a remote system that has a nfs mount. Have not tried it, but
> would guess that the answer is Yes It Could.
> 
> Using the rsync or rsyncd modes, you have the options to include and/or
> exclude whatever you want. Very simple to do.

First of all, thanks for the suggestions.
I should say, I'm just backing up machines on my home system.
It's not Fort Knox.

But I have a directory /common on one machine ("alfred")
which I NFS-mount on the other machines.
I don't want to back this up more than once.

>> 2. I have seen it suggested that it is not a good idea
>> to backup onto a partition on the same drive
>> as the BackupPC server?
>> Is that true?
>> If so, is a partition on a separate drive on the same machine also bad?
> 
> Sidestepping your question a little, are you planning to Not use some
> form of redundant storage? Given that you are making backups, single
> drive or nonredundant storage would be a bad idea.

As I said, this is not Fort Knox.
I haven't backed up anything for the last 10 years,
and have been very lucky, I guess.
A couple of disks have died in that time,
but fortunately they passed on their secrets before dying.

> In general, it is true that using a storage system for data/files
> physically separate from the os/utilities is typically faster, but that
> does not sound like the gist of your question. What I do is to mount a
> logical volume at the storage location (/var/lib/backuppc) so that it
> can grow or be otherwise modified as needed.

I've had bad experiences with LVM, so will avoid that if possible.

I'm running BackupPC on machine 1 ("helen")
and would like to back up onto machine 2 ("alfred").
As far as I can see, that means NFS-mounting alfred:/backup
on helen:/var/lib/backup .
I want to backup /home on machines 3,4,5 (various laptops).
All are running Linux, though later I'd like to add a Windows machine -
but that can wait.

> As a first approximation, start up a manual rsync of something big
> (e.g., /usr, iso image, etc.) from the remote system and see how that
> impacts the proposed BackupPC server. Once the BackupPC server is put
> into service, it is easy to figure out what the number should be.

That sounds like a good idea.
Though I wasn't very clear whether one could widen 
the list of directories to backup after setting things up.
I don't foresee any problem with congestion on my small system.