Hi all,

I'm a newbie with regards to the backup process. I started backing up the data on my Linux boxes but was wondering how I can start backing up the structure (other important) directories for each box. Something simple that I can manually do let's say once a week and be less worried about what if one of the servers become corrupted one day what should I do!

Two of these machines are SAMBA servers. How can I backup Just the directories with data, user accounts and the SAMBA config?

What other directories need to be backed up and could you please provide me with the commands? I would really appreciate it.


Mail server:
uname -a && cat /etc/*release
Linux servername 2.6.18-238.12.1.el5 #1 SMP Tue May 31 13:22:04 EDT 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
CentOS release 5.6 (Final)


Share server 1:
Linux servername 2.6.18-194.32.1.el5PAE #1 SMP Wed Jan 5 18:43:13 EST 2011 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
CentOS release 5.5 (Final)


Share server 2:
Linux servername 2.6.18-194.32.1.el5PAE #1 SMP Wed Jan 5 18:43:13 EST 2011 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
CentOS release 5.5 (Final)

The Samba servers have to stay separate for security purposes.

From the perspective of a user/developer versus someone who maintains servers; here are the things I do and would practice given your situation.

Data

Data would be kept separate, using something like RAID drives, some method to protect that data from loss.

Operating System State

Likely your kernel is not changing; therefore the root file system is where any changes occur; such as changes to modules loading, their settings, user accounts, network settings, and so forth. Backing up your root file system can be done via a few means; using dd, using cp -a (into a target file system, file which you've mounted as -o loop.

One common backup plan might be to take a golden image of the entire OS and new fresh setup with all users and no data. Then make some backup of the changes. Some people use rsync or other to more quickly maintain data. Some people create a cron job with a script and some out's to tell one of good or bad reports. Some applications work well too that can be automated.

In all cases, when you run some distributed data, you either have to have file locks on changes or stop all remote access during the backup or test of backup. There are some live state backups that could work.

It may be possible to use windows systems even to backup with.

Any backup is better than none generally.

Some people still do nightly tape backups with a tar command.