backup and disaster recovery methods

[Scott H]

I am working on methods for recovery of a Linux
server, and I wanted to run this by the group for
comments or recommendations, since I'm new to
this. I have a server which acts as an email
relay, storing no mail locally.  It also stores
no other data, besides the configuration data for
its mail systems. I plan to set up an automated,
regular complete backup for it, but I was also
considering this:  Say I have among my partitions
on this box:

sda2    /
sda3    /backups
sda5    /var/log
sda7    /var/spool

Let's say I set up mirrordir to keep /backups
(sda3) mirrored from / (sda2) maybe once per
night or week.  Then, if I manage to mess up the
OS (as I recently did, running tripwire and
up2date at the same time - don't ask) and the
machine won't boot, I wouldn't have to resort to
a rebuild and the tape backup.  I could boot the
box to my LNX-BBC CD (or a Tom's root boot),
change fstab to mount sda3 as / and sda2 as
/backups, and reboot the box.  As long as
mirrordir hadn't yet copied whatever corruption
was in the OS, I should be able to boot and go
just as things were the last time mirrordir ran,
right?????????  Better ways to do this?

Scott



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