[SLUG] Backup

[john at johnallsopp.co.uk]

>> 1) I want a system that backs up to DVD
> You and your bloody backups ;)

Well, I still haven't actually done one, and I find it incredible that
it's so difficult. There's nothing in my Fedora menu that says
'backup', so I just want to know how other people manage it.

I'm moaning, as usual, about Linux usability.

>> 2) DAR seems not to interface with the DVD drive at all.
>
> Does this surprise you? You need clever things like mkisofs and
> cdrecord to write to dvds... or use something cleverer than DAR to
> write it on the fly?

In some ways yes, but I hear what you're saying. What's a backup
system if it doesn't write to backup media? But obviously unix
tradition breaks things up into single tasks. kdar isn't listed in the
repositories I have registered.

>> I'm expecting
>> to be able to point DAR to, for instance, /mnt/CD, but having put a
>> DVD disc in the drive, and seen it pop up on the desktop, I can't
>> for
>> the life of me work out where it's mounted .. any clues?
>
> Erm, does "mount" give you any clues?

I posted this in response to Martin

>> 4) Online resources suggest DAR is something that will max my CPU
>> and
>> render my PC useless while operating. You may have read my previous
>> posts about that. I'd rather not. Do we know a way to control that?
>
> This all depends on a number of things. Clearly your hard disk is
> going to be busy - I presume you've accepted that fact? As for the CPU
> thingy then it depends a bit on what type of backup you're doing - if
> incremental/diff then I'm not sure what its diff algorithm is, I'm not
> sure about that. Then you have a couple of other options - you can
> compress the files and also encrypt them. If you choose to do neither
> of these and just store the files then cpu usage shouldn't be too bad.
> These options are the dar options file.

Aye, CPU usage does all seem to come down to how much compression I
want, I see that. I'm still mooching around for a way to control any
process to stop it maxing out the CPU. It just seems like something
linux would definitely provide.

> Hope that helps.
> Steve O

It's all good, thanks :-)

J