Hello:

I am using the rbxi script. I configured it, and it works.

I am testing it on backing up my home directory and a portion of /usr/local.

It works.

But I am missing something conceptually.

Among other variables, I have the following set:

BACKUP_MOUNT_POINT_RS='

BACKUP_MOUNT_POINT_DIRECTORY_RS='/backup-rs'

Then, I ran rbxi many times with

RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTIONS=' --dry-run -v '

to get the excludes correct for /usr/local

Now I actually ran a backup to IOMEGA_HDD. It did create the directory

/media/IOMEGA_HDD/backup-rs/rossiar

where rossiar is my home directory. There were files in there so everything is working fine. I killed the backup because, I wanted to try it again to see what happens.

rbxi seems to write to /media/IOMEGA_HDD/backup-rs/rossiar again!!!!
Why? Shouldn't rbxi label the backup somehow? For example, shouldn't there be many backup subdirectories rossiarxxx where xxx gives a label of the backup? I don't understand what rbxi is doing on the second backup.

Also,

root@KanotixBox:/bin/rbxi/rbxi-data# rbxi -v
------------------------------------------------------------------
rbxi - the universal, portable, system backup script.
Version: 2.5.3
Script Last Modified: 22 April 2009
Script Location: /bin/rbxi
Last Backup Date: 23 May 2009 - 20:41
Last Backup Directory: /media/KINGSTON/backup-rs
Last Backup Program: rsync
Your last backup did not use the Job feature.
Rdiff-backup history: Unset
Rsync backup history: Location: /media/KINGSTON/backup-rs :: Date: 23 May 2009 - 20:41
Run Time: 0:01:58 :: Deletion: false :: Job No: none

Why doesn't rbxi -v give the latest backup of May 24, 2009. Both backups (May 23 and May 24) were killed with cntl C because I wanted to get it right with respect to my question above.

I hope you will be patient with me and provide the missing logic of my problem.

Kind regards,

Angelo

P.S. This is the last Linux box on Kanotix. I have converted 4 machines so far to Sidux. In those cases, I didn't care about backups.

PPS. A suggestion: rbxi is a concept which could grow into single system image. I would like to have ALL my systems with the same stuff on them. I know one could do this with samba, mounting nfs, etc., ... But wouldn't it be nice if there were a script which could align multiple machines to the same home directory image and even the same kernel image?
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rbxi runs by default rsync, which does not do what you think it does, rsync creates a mirror of the file system(s) being backed up. Every new run of rsync updates that mirror.

This is what makes rsync so fast, by the way, it only updates the files, or parts of files, that have changed. And if you use the remove deleted files, it also removes any files that are now gone from your current system in the backup.

rdiff-backup, which I left in only as a legacy method (from rd-h2.sh) I view as basically totally useless, slow, weakly executed, and useless over the network, does basically the same thing except it does create sub directories that let you restore to a specific date, but I find the time overhead to achieve that functionality made me never do backups with rdiff-backup, especially network backups, so it's an idea that was nice in theory but far too slow for reality to be of use, so I switched defaults to rsync and have been happily having true images of my systems for restore ever since.
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