11 Backup

Computers crash, disks become corrupt, data is lost, security is compromised. Today, computers are pretty reliable and it is rare to lose data (except through accidental deletion) but it can happen and usually when it is most inconvenient! Important work should always be backed up.

In this chapter we review approaches to backup and recovery. We begin with a review of recovering accidentally deleted files from a filesytem that is not backed up. Then we continue with simple approaches to backing up, including backing up to remote storage or CD and the use of a commercial backup system called Legato NetWorker (also known as the Solstice NetWorker).

My current backup routine on Ubuntu systems is through the use of deja-dup and duplicity as the backend. This works simply and effectively. Previous backup processes employed include backup-manager, which is easy to configure and run, and backup2l, backuppc, bacula, cdbackup, dar, and mondo.

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