[CentOS] Dump on remote filesystems?

[Theo Band [GreenPeak]]

Scott Ehrlich wrote:
> I have a couple C5 systems I want to back up.  My plan is to, one way 
> or another, back them up to a C5 machine in my office.  I have samba 
> installed on the systems to back up, the machines are mounted on the 
> system in my office, and a tape library hanging of the system in my 
> office.
>
> I was hoping to perform a simple /sbin/dump of the remote systems.  I 
> put together a script for another successful backup I have going on a 
> system with local filesystems.  But for remote filesystems, I get 
> errors of File Cannot Be Accessed (//remote_system/subdir) which does 
> exist as an smb mounted filesystem.
>
> I'd use NFS, but I would like a bit more control and some level of 
> encryption for the user authentication and data being transferred.
>
> If a direct dump of remote smb filesystems isn't possible, I may opt 
> to have each system perform their own local dumps, then run a script 
> locally on the tape-connected machine to dump those local dumps, or 
> copy the dumps locally then dump them to tape.
>
> If nothing else works, I can always install Windows XP and use Windows 
> backup program, but I'd really like to try and get this going under 
> Linux before going that route.
>
> Thanks for insights.
>
> Scott
What you could do is to dump from the remote machine to the main backup 
machine. For this to work I work with ssh keys (no password needed).
The example assumes the backup is started from the remote host. But in 
principle it can also be initiated from the backup server using ssh.

SRC_SERVER=this_hostname
BAK_SERVER=backup_server
DATE=$(date +%Y%m%d)
dumplevel=0
export RSH=ssh

ssh $BAK_SERVER mkdir -p /backup/${SRC_SERVER}/${DATE}_${dumplevel}
# file needs to exist
backup_file=/backup/somefile
ssh $BAK_SERVER touch ${backup_file}
dump -${dumplevel} -u -z -f $BAK_SERVER:${backup_file} 
/dev/VolGroup00/VolGroup00



Theo