Backup plan

[ocbo41]

I am thinking about my backup plan and am wondering what would be the best machine to the backup software on. I will have a Powermac backing up to a Linux box, should I have the server manage and run the software or the powermac?

The advantages of using this (that I can think of)

Wont bog the powermac down when working on it and backing up
no software running in background
perhaps better software?

Disadvantages:
would be a little harder to backup on demand (hooked up to a monitor with a output selector and usb hardware switch)

Just thought i'd throw it out there....I originally thought of installing it on the powermac but thought of this...so is it worth it or the best way?

Will be backing up incremental and non incremental backups as well as storing offsite dvd backups and online backups.

 

[Nugget]

One of the biggest challenges you'll face trying to back up an OS X machine to a Linux server is the awkward part where there are no Linux filesystems which are aware of OS X's extended attributes and other metadata capabilities that are available in HFS+.

Since you've got a Linux server I'm going to assume you're comfortable on the command line and suggest you take a look at rdiff-backup which is a really great command-line differential backup tool which can natively handle backing up OS X machines to non-OS X systems and elegantly retaining all the HFS+ metadata and extended attribute information.

It's really great stuff.

 

[ocbo41]

Hmmm thanks for the info, I forgot about the + part....and thats the thing I dont know a lick of command line in linux...just "reboot" when my DSL distro wouldnt fire up lol I am using knopix to get a feel for everything but am having a tough time with linux not being GUI friendly. I have Windows 2000 on there now, but am very annoyed when certain things wont backup right.

Example.. Backing up my home folder for my now sold MBP and tried to just drag and drop it but there where files and folder that had filenames too long or some parameter wouldn't cross over and stopped the whole backup. Backup3 places them in containers that have to be unzipped in windows, and took me over 1.5 hrs to backup vs an estimated 32min of just dragging and droping the 12gb.

I would love to use linux only and need it only for a home studio type server, I hate windows and but am so used to it I keep turning back to it (well if I had enough money I would turn to an Xserve ) I will look into the Rdiff program...I would assume keeping that metadata is crucial most of the backed up files will be .raw and .tiffs and .psd's

ZFS isn't far enough along in linux to be user friendly is it? (assuming leopard will be ZFS readable)