Re: does anybody have an incron based backup script?

[Aaron Suggs <asuggs@gmail.com>]

Hi Arian,

Tarsnap is based on "snapshots" [1] -- copies of the system at a given
moment [2], which are therefore immutable.

Focus less on the "tar" in tarsnap, and more on the "snap". :)

> But maybe it is just good enough to have hourly backups and stop
> worrying about real-time..

That's certainly true for me. The overhead of running tarsnap is
negligible on my system.

What you describe would be handy for large datasets which are mostly
static and require near realtime backups.

I wonder if there's a way to extend tarsnap to allow inotify (or
similar) to build an index of changed paths. Tarsnap could have a mode
to only examine paths in a database, and really on the cache for other
paths. Time Machine on OS X uses a similar index. [3]

Cheers,
Aaron

1: http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2006-09-13-encrypted-backup.html
2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snapshot_(computer_storage)
3: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Machine_(Apple_software)#How_it_works