[CentOS] OT - backup question/advice

Wed Sep 6 05:43:36 UTC 2006
John Summerfied <debian at herakles.homelinux.org>

Thomas E Dukes wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I have been using mondorescue to backup to dvd for several months now
> without any problems.
> 
> Since upgrading to Centos 4.4, I now receive a few errors.  The errors are
> for files in /var/named/chroot/proc.  I guess these files change so when I
> do a differntial backup they aren't there and result in errors.  (Never got
> any errors before and I think these files were there in 4.3) If I exclude
> the files from the backup, no errors.
> 
> My question is what, if any problems would I run into not backing these
> files up and having to do a complete system restore?


Take care with what you backup; there is _no_ point in backing up any of 
the kernel's pseudo-filesystems including proc.


Also, take care using mondo; the last two times I looked at it, the code 
was horribly trusting of information the user provided; the first time 
it could easily be provoked to SEGV errors.

The second time, I contented myself with picking out some of the source 
code that I thought looked a but sus (I'm not much of a C programmer, 
and at my age I don't care to add it to my resume). People much more 
export than I (including Debian/Ubuntu developers) agreed with my 
appraisal. Worse, when I took it up with the author the first time, he 
denied flatly there was a problem, and claimed "It's not a backup tool, 
it's a disaster-recovery tool."

It's a shame, because there's much to commend the basic idea.

Take a look at DAR, it provides similar capability. It can be found at 
sf.net, and probably one or more of the extras repos.

If there is a fan of mondo here who's a capable C programmer and who 
understands secure programming, I suggest you audit the code. Mondo 
needs it.




-- 

Cheers
John

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