[SGVLUG]Mondo, was: How to split a "big backup" [that uses tar]

[Dustin]

On Thu, 29 Sep 2005, Marsden MacRae wrote:

> Dustin wrote:
> > 
> > Here is the unusual thing about Mondo archive--the archive discs are 
> > bootable, so they work properly if you've screwed up so badly the system 
> > is unbootable.
> 
> 
> this sounds highly interesting to our little operation, especially since 
> their page mentions they have Debian.

There are packages back as far as Woody, so mondo is easily installed on 
any currently supported Debian release.

> > Oh, well, if the width of the tie is more important than data integrity,
> > maybe Mondo won't help.  I had to write a tiny little shell script to feed
> > it the command-line options to make it do exactly what I wanted.
> 
> um, <diffident foot shuffling> is it tacky to ask if I can borrow your 
> script?

No, not tacky at all, though (as usual with things people wrote for
themselves) it needs some tweaking.  I didn't know what I needed when I
started and I just hacked the script each time I did a backup until I
wasn't fiddling with it anymore.

I guess motivation to Do The Right Thing and clean it up is good.  OTOH if
you just want something to base your own script on, it may not matter.

You don't need any engineering if you always do your backups the same
way--a one-line shell script will do nicely. The only reason my script
does more is that I do full backups to DVD, then I do level 1 backups to a
single CD until there isn't room, then level 1 backups to a single DVD.  
When it needs more than one DVD to do a level 1, then I just do another
full backup and start over.  I also tend to rotate a set of RW disks for
the level 1's to cut down on the stack of R disks I'm generating.  I
wanted to hide the correct command-line options in a script (really
scripts) so I could safely do a backup at night while half-asleep.

I'm starting to wonder if I should really trust RW media that much,
though.  I'm not totally sure that just telling Mondo to verify the disks
after writing may not be enough to catch when the write limit is
exhausted.  Anyone have any thoughts on this?

A couple of more points about Mondo: it's principal limitation is that it
isn't really suitable for large commercial installations, because it
doesn't do network this or tape that.  If you need all that, something
like backula or amanda is probably what you want.  Mondo is designed for
backing up a single machine to a series of bootable optical disks, and
seems to do that very well.  The only thing it lacks for a "typical" user
is a GUI, though I bet it wouldn't take much to hack one up in Python.

When i went looking for a better backup system I saw a big gap between the
*very very many* scripts that are just thin layers over tar and the really
heavy-duty systems like bakula and amanda, and also between systems that
assume you have tape backup (which just isn't economically reasonable for
home use) or make you split up the tarfiles yourself and those that have
convenient options for optical storage.  Mondo is one of the relative few
that seem designed for the actual needs and hardware of a more home user, 
at least in functionality.  A simple GUI and it would be perfect.

Hmm.  Any interest in a "cool tools" session on mondo?

Dustin