rsync and deleted files

[Alex Dean]

As Bob said, this doesn't really help with your current situation, but  
maybe it's helpful for the future...  A while back, someone on this  
list suggested rdiff-backup for backups.  I've been very happy with  
that suggestion, and have been using it ever since.

It uses librsync.  Your backup is a mirror, containing the most recent  
versions of your files.  (No more messing with 'full' versus  
'incremental' backups as in other backup software.)  Additional  
metadata & diffs are also stored, allowing you to revert a file to  
some older version.  The backup repository is just normal files (with  
some extra metadata),  so you don't need any special backup tools to  
get a file out.  (scp works nicely.)  In the case of a failed backup  
job, there's a single command to run to revert the repository to the  
last good backup, and you haven't lost anything.  This has happened to  
me several times due to network problems, and I've never had a problem  
reverting the repository.

rdiff-backup is really fantastic.  I can post the commands I use to  
backup my OSX and Xubuntu machines if you like.  (It's available for  
Windows as well, I think, but I haven't used that.)

http://rdiff-backup.nongnu.org/

alex

On Sep 8, 2009, at 12:48 PM, Bob Elzer wrote:

> Sorry about your files, I'll point out one mistake you did, that I  
> see so
> often.
>
> A lot of people seem to backup to the same tape/disk/media every  
> time they
> do a backup.
>
> I always ask them, what happens if in the middle of that backup, you  
> system
> dies. You are now left with a dead system and an incomplete backup,  
> you just
> overwrote you good backup killing it when the system died.
>
> You should always rotate your backup media, just so this kind of thing
> doesn't happen.
>
> I know it doesn't help now, but I'm sure you'll never let it happen  
> again.
>
>
> One thought about your lost data, is it possible you forgot to mount  
> your
> USB drive, so could you backups have gone into   /media/320GB/ 
> naubrey/  on
> the original drive ???  Hopefully.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: plug-discuss-bounces at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> [mailto:plug-discuss-bounces at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] On Behalf Of  
> Nathan
> England
> Sent: Monday, September 07, 2009 7:34 PM
> To: plug-discuss at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> Subject: rsync and deleted files
>
>
> I plugged my USB drive into my system, ran my backup script and went  
> to
> supper. My backup script contains
>
> rsync -avz --delete-after /home/naubrey/ /media/320GB/naubrey/
>
>
> Usually, it works great. Problem is my /home/naubrey/ directory on  
> my system
> was EMPTY and it wiped out my backup!!!!
>
> I just wiped my work laptop and reinstalled, but I had not copied my  
> user
> directory stuff back because I needed to make some additional  
> changes. I
> made the changes and wanted to back up the changes, forgetting my user
> directory was included in my all_inclusive backup script...
>
> The USB drive is ext2 and when I came back I immediately unmounted and
> mounted ro.
>
> This is a typical user directory with 60GB of text files, abiword  
> files,
> kword files, OpenOffice files, mp3, ogg, about 100 avi dvds, and  
> thousands
> of notes... Some files were only 2 k others were over 1GB.
>
> As I have never attempted recovery of deleted files because I am  
> (99% of the
> time) very vigilante about my backups. I design backup systems for
> customers!!!! ha ha
>
> What utilities or programs are there that might automate this as I  
> really
> don't care to sit and tell the system to recover this inode, and  
> yes, this
> inode, and again y to this inode as there are well over 200,000 files.
>
> Thanks for any help, insights, condolences!!!
>
> nathan
>
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