Forget the figures below regarding the time it has taken me to do an incremental. I screwed up and did not do an incremental but a complete copy (pathing mistake). I'm going to start it again (right I hope) and I'll let you know.
Ken
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: RE: [Box-Admins] Permissions From: "Ken Causey" ken@kencausey.com Date: Sun, February 06, 2011 10:27 am To: "Squeak Hosting Support" box-admins@lists.squeakfoundation.org
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Box-Admins] Permissions From: Göran Krampe goran@krampe.se Date: Sun, February 06, 2011 2:15 am To: box-admins@lists.squeakfoundation.org
Hi all!
Yes, we used rsnapshot earlier, but all though it uses rsync (good for partial file changes) it ends up using hardlinks etc on the target and thus consumes quite a bit of space there.
For my local needs (laptop onto a USB vfat drive) I ended up picking Duplicity the other day. But either way we want a solution that transfers only modifications.
I would be happy with a solution that simply keeps an offsite "mirror". Rsnapshot gave us "history" too, and sure, if we can use it then it is probably a good choice. Ken suspected transfers were large, but I am unsure, I hope they are not and that it uses rsync for the actual transfer.
There is no doubt that it is using rsync, it's just a fancy shell script really and it logs the major commands it executes in the log file (/var/log/rsnapshot.log). As such my early speculation that whole files are being sent is probably wrong, unless some special invocation of rsync is required for deltas to be used (I can't claim to be an rsync expert.)
However, as I mentioned separately I'm trying to update my local backup of the primary server content in much the same way rsnapshot does, but manually (using rsync). I have an, in theory, 10mbit Internet connection, of which I really get more like 5-7mbit downloads. The incremental (since last July) of /home/ took over 6 hours and actually it doesn't look right to me, I'm going to have to do it again. I've started a sync of the other stuff now and we'll see how that goes and then I'll get back to /home/. My connection is asynchronous like most home connection (probably 3/4 mbit), so I wonder if there is a lot of two way traffic involved which could explain the time it is taking. I haven't done the math though to see what is reasonable.
Currently I don't have a proper broadband, but if we set up something that can run "night time" off to people "home computers", then that should be enough I think. The reason we used a server that my former employer had was that it was also a Hetzner box so the connection was really good.
regards, Göran