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Git is nice and flexible. I wish my backups were that flexible. Thankfully, my wishes have been answered, as bup was created.
I used to lookup the 28c3 bup slides for a quick reference, until I realized I was always looking for just one page of the slides. Best docs are short docs.
# Install sudo apt-get install python2.6-dev python-fuse python-pyxattr python-pylibacl git clone https://github.com/bup/bup.git cd bup && make && make test && sudo make install
# index zz's home directory bup index -ux /home/zz # backup to default BUP_DIR and label the backup 'laptop' bup save -n laptop /home/zz # backup to remote myserver, naming the backup 'laptop' bup save -r myserver -n laptop /home/zz # index /home/zz on myserver bup on myserver index -ux /home/zz # backup myserver:/home/zz, naming the backup 'server' bup on myserver save -n server /home/zz # check the latest laptop backup bup ls laptop/latest/home/zz
It’s hard to migrate from tivoli, rsnapshot, tarsnap and friends when you don’t know how. So here we go, without further ado, all you needed to know about bup but never daret to ask, ie
Some reasons to use bup:
- global deduplication
- rsnapshot: 4.97G = 2.18G with bup
- rsnapshot: 12.6G = 4.6G with bup
- save transmission time
- backups are oneliners
- anytime snapshots
- uid,gid,permissions,acl,selinux
- par2 anti-bitrot and corruption resistance
- runs on dd-wrt
This is awesome, but there are two caveats. One is I am unaware of Enterprise&tm; shops using bup yet, the other is a common question: no, bup doesn’t encrypt data.
You can either encrypt or deduplicate. Choose. If you want the other, you probably want duplicity or tarsnap.
you can either
- either encrypt or deduplicate
or
you can encrypt _and_ deduplicate (eg. running btrfs inside a LUKS encrypted volume)
sure you can. you can run everything on an encrypted volume. but you need to unlock this volume to put your backups on it. so far I haven’t seen any solutions I would be happy with, and running luks on a backup server seems silly when you have to unlock it ever time you do a backup run. btrfs deduplication is block level and therefore can’t achieve the ratios bup gets, either.