Back Up Help......

[bbeverage]

Was reading this forum and think I might have made a mistake. I want to back up the entire server to a USB drive. I used rsync --delete -lprogr -W --progress / "backup"
I got the following:
file has vanished: "/proc/2/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/2/task/2/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/3/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/3/task/3/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/4/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/4/task/4/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/5/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/5/task/5/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/6/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/6/task/6/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/7/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/7/task/7/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/8/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/8/task/8/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/9/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/9/task/9/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/10/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/10/task/10/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/11/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/11/task/11/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/12/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/12/task/12/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/13/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/13/task/13/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/14/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/14/task/14/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/15/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/15/task/15/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/16/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/16/task/16/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/17/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/17/task/17/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/18/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/18/task/18/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/19/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/19/task/19/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/25/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/25/task/25/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/26/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/26/task/26/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/27/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/27/task/27/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/28/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/28/task/28/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/29/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/29/task/29/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/134/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/134/task/134/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/218/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/218/task/218/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/219/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/219/task/219/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/220/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/220/task/220/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/221/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/221/task/221/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/222/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/222/task/222/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/311/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/311/task/311/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/380/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/380/task/380/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/414/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/414/task/414/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/451/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/451/task/451/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/468/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/468/task/468/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/507/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/507/task/507/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/953/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/953/task/953/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/1489/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/1489/task/1489/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/1946/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/1946/task/1946/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/25140/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/25140/task/25140/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/25141/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/25141/task/25141/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/25206/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/25206/task/25206/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/16763/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/16763/task/16763/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/16765/exe"
file has vanished: "/proc/16765/task/16765/exe"

I stopped this with a ctrl c. Did I just delete the above files and if so how do I get them back? This is a production server that CANT go down I do need to back up once a night.
Will the missing files hurt anything?

Thanks in advance.

Brian

[SlowJet]

There is no baremetal backup so creating a full back on a desktop is a waste of time.
Backup the /home dir.
Re-install but don't format the home dir, use the same computer name and username and password.
It will boot up fine.

If home gets screwed up, format /home on the install and recover data from the /home backup (but not the whole /home dir - just the data and and config settings needed.)

sj

[SlowJet]

Sorry, I didn't see that it was a sever.
You need to back up with another machine (OS) and treat the system /root as data.
To recover, use another machine (OS) and overlay the "data" in the newly formated partition.

OS's don't fail that often, usually hardware such as disk.
There is no shadow backup for linux so it needs to be offline to get a clean copy.

SJ

[bbeverage]

Yeah I would just like to back up all config files and databases just in case one of the developers mess up something. So I cant use rsync to just copy the entire drive on to the USB drive once a night? That way if something does go wrong I can just get the config file or data base from the USB drive. Script file or what ever I need to get from the USB drive.

In the above post:
file has vanished: "/proc/414/exe"
this just says the file does not exsit on the destination RIGHT?
The USB drive is empty as of now so nothing would be there.

Thanks,
Brian

[SlowJet]

sorry, I can't help.
I don't believe in resync or USB drives.

SJ

[homey]

Is the machine still running ok?

Normally, you would just backup data instead of the whole system but I don't see why you couldn't use rsync on a live system to another drive. You do want to exclude subfolders of /dev , /proc and /mnt .

# from man rsync
-x, --one-file-system don't cross filesystem boundaries

So, the command may look like this......

(cd / ; find . -xdev | rsync --delete-after -xavz . /mnt/backup/fedora)

It sould be easy enough to put that in a cron job....

30 0 * * * (cd / ; find . -xdev | rsync --delete-after -xavz . /mnt/backup/fedora) 2>&1 > /var/log/nightly_backup.log

[bbeverage]

Originally Posted by homey

Is the machine still running ok?

Normally, you would just backup data instead of the whole system but I don't see why you couldn't use rsync on a live system to another drive. You do want to exclude subfolders of /dev , /proc and /mnt .

# from man rsync
-x, --one-file-system don't cross filesystem boundaries

So, the command may look like this......

(cd / ; find . -xdev | rsync --delete-after -xavz . /mnt/backup/fedora)

It sould be easy enough to put that in a cron job....

30 0 * * * (cd / ; find . -xdev | rsync --delete-after -xavz . /mnt/backup/fedora) 2>&1 > /var/log/nightly_backup.log

The machine is running fine. I just wanted an easy way to back up the entire drive. I think that would be easier than looking for all of the scripts and cfg files and just backing them up.

I was just confused by the --delete. I know now that is for the destination. RIGHT? If the file does not exist on the destination anymore delete it. I plan to set this up as a cron job. I thank you for the info it has been helpful.

Thanks,
Brian

[homey]

I was just confused by the --delete. I know now that is for the destination. RIGHT? If the file does not exist on the destination anymore delete it.

Actually, the other way around. If a file doesn't exist on the source, remove it from the destination also.
I use --delete-after so that is the last part which rsync does.

PS: I did try my rsync command in a cron job and it worked just fine and I was able to boot into the new system after adjusting the /etc/fstab to show the new location of / at the different partition.