[kwlug-disc] Backups and Hard Disks

[Rashkae]

Chris Irwin wrote:
> I'm recovering from a hard disk failure in my laptop. Luckily I didn't
> lose anything due to my constant use of `unison` to my server, but it
> got me thinking: This is not nearly as automatic as I would like as it
> relies on me to manually run unison.
> 
> Has anybody come up with a better solution? Mainly I'm talking about a
> laptop that works disconnected fairly often, so you can't assume it
> will be on 24/7 for a scheduled job at night.
> 

I would create a script to do the sync, put that script in an hourly
cron job, and optionally, call it form rc.local.

If the notebook is not connected to the network where the backup server
can be reached, no harm, no foul.  If the notebook is on the right
network, the backup job will be started as soon as the notebook is
started, and run at every hour.  (I don't know how unison works, but
when working with rsync, this scheme works well because rsync is very
good at efficiently only updating what it needs, so generally uses
little overhead when called hourly)