Re: Backup information?

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

On Fri, 2006-08-04 at 12:08 -0400, Owen Taylor wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-08-04 at 08:34 -0400, Owen Taylor wrote:
> 
> >  - The configuration of what is backed up is done
> >    by /etc/rsyncd/backup.exclude on each machine.
> > 
> >    The current configurations include both the data for the system and
> >    services, and the OS install. Transient data and remotely mounted
> >    filesystems are excluded via backup.exclude.
> > 
> >    The new machines label and box are not yet being rsync-ed. Boo. Hiss.
> >    I just need to find some time to set it up (easy) and make sure that
> >    they backups are sync'ing correctly (easy, but time consuming).
> 
> Now done.
> 
> I've replaced the placeholder information at
> http://live.gnome.org/Sysadmin/Backups with a version of my mail.

I just fixed the TODO about making the rsync log files available, and
added the following text:

===
The output of the rsync cron jobs are mailed nightly to Owen. In
addition, the log of each rsync is copied to the backed-up machine
as /var/log/backup.log. Looking at the activity in these logs will often
reveal files that really should be excluded from the backup; if
transient files are being rsync'ed, you'll often see something at the
end of the log file like: 

rsync error: some files could not be transferred (code 23) at main.c(1146)
08/04/06 04:36:21: rsync of menubar.gnome.org failed: 23

This "failure" is mostly harmless; what it usually means is that a file
that rsync saw when listing the directories was gone before it went back
and actually copied it. Examining the log files and figuring out what to
add to the exclude files is a virtuous activity, but in some cases, this
type of failure is unavoidable.
===

Regards,
                                      Owen