[dundee] OpenWRT on a Linksys WAG354G

[Rick Moynihan]

2008/9/28 Philipp Geyer <nistur at googlemail.com>:
> We have recently removed the Ubuntu router we had sitting here due to a
> harddrive dying (don't worry Lee, I backed up the scripts you took hours
> writing) but now we have no form of repository or backup space as we're
> just using a Linksys WAG354G.
>
> I have a NAS enclosure with a 320GB HDD in it that I rarely use, I was
> thinking if I could get cvs or (preferably) rsync to backup directories
> and synchronise between my PC and laptop then it'd b great, I had a look
> at OpenWRT but it went over my head by quite a bit. I found this:
>    http://wiki.openwrt.org/OpenWrtDocs/Hardware/Linksys/WAG354G
> But I am unhappy doing this myself as I *will* break it for a while
> before I get it to work and we sort of need the internet here.
>
> Firstly, is it unwise running rsync on this?
> Secondly (if the answer to 1 is not really), is there someone we could
> persuade (with various forms of alcohol if necessary) to take a look at
> this for us?
> Secondly (if the answer to 1 is yes), does anyone have any suggestions
> what could be done?
>
> Thanks

It's not clear to me exactly what your question is here... Is it that
you want to know about backup solutions or installing OpenWRT?  I've
no experience with OpenWRT but to answer the backup parts of the
question:

Firstly don't go anywhere near CVS, as it was always rubbish; and it's
not really a backup solution (more a source control system - and a
poor one at that).  You could however use a source control system for
backups; which does have the advantage of being able to rollback and
tag (label particular snapshots).  Some people have used subversion
for this, but I'd avoid SVN if possible as I've had numerous problems
with it and it's dependencies breaking.  Plus I've experienced too
many incompatibilities between the server and client.

I tend to keep most of my important work under source control anyway,
and use a combination of email (cc'ing important files/attachments
into my gmail account) and occasionally duplicating data elsewhere.
This works for me, as what's important to me tends to be code and the
occasional document.  As I'm a *BIG* fan of git though, I have been
tempted to try this, and it might be worth looking at:

http://eigenclass.org/hiki/gibak-backup-system-introduction

Git has the advantage that backing up the backup (or repo) is stupid
simple (just tar up the .git directory).  Also there's little or no
config required.  And it should be easy to distribute the backup too,
maintaining multiple local/remote copies.

rsync is fine for backups, and I can't think of any reason why this
would be unwise, as it's pretty good at one way mirroring.  However
there are some problems with this approach, i.e. if you accidentally
delete a file locally and mirror the deletion then you've lost your
backup.  With a bit more scripting you can mitigate some of these
issues:

http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/

If you want to perform two way mirroring, then you might want to look
at unison, which is pretty damn good... though I believe development
on this project has mostly stopped.

http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/

Hope this is some use,

R.