[CentOS] Help with full and incremental dumps

Scott Ehrlich

scott at MIT.EDU
Mon Dec 31 07:20:51 UTC 2007


I have an Overland Arcvault 12 library with a full LTO3 magazine of 400/800 GB 
tapes.  It is connected directly to the fileserver via a SCSI card/cable.

The two main directories I want to back up are /var/log, which is on one 
filesystem, and /home, which is on another.

There are _currently_ no databases to worry about, but there may be active 
users logged in and active jobs running.  We'll just take our chances with what 
can be backed up.

I've successfully run dump/restore to an external USB 1 TB hard drive as our 
backup device until the tape library arrived.  Now, finding the appropriate 
dump and restore commands to throw into a script is the fun part.  The first 
time will obviously produce a full backup of said directories to back up. 
Subsequent ones will be incremental.

What should my dump lines look like for both full and subsequent 
incrementals? And, to test the backup and in case I need to retrieve a 
file, what should a respective restore line look like?

Thanks much.

Scott



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