A simple backup script to be run on a windows desktop that synchronizes and differentially backs up a desktop, a network storage device and an external hard drive. Data can be injected into either the network storage device or the desktop and changes will be synchronized and propogated in such a way that data should not be lost or overwritten. Under the hood this scrip uses python, rdiff-backup and unison. See megabackup.py for details. # written by Andrew Leifer, leifer@fas.harvard.edu # With code snippetts from Benjamin Schwartz, InnoboxDevices, Innobackup at # http://github.com/InnoBox/innobackup # in file /overlay/usr/local/bin/innobox_perform_backup # Requirements: # rdiff-backup.exe from http://www.nongnu.org/rdiff-backup/ # unison.exe from http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/ # Python from http://www.python.org/download/ # Given a desktop, a server and an external hard drive, this system will: # - Make differential backups of directories from the server to the external drive # - Make differential backups of directories on the desktop onto a secondary location on the desktop # - Synchronize the server and the desktop # - Re-differential backup the server onto the external drive # # These are the use cases I am interested in. # There are two types of directories, "Data" directories that primarily reside on the server and # are not used day to day and "Home" directories that a user will want easy access to on their local machine. # # - "Data" added to the server from another machine should get propogated to the external backup drive. # # - The "home" directory should always be up to date on the server so that a user may access their home directory # from their desktop, or off site and changes are propogated either way. # # - Anything on the server should be backed up differentially. # # # Q: Why are you making a differential backup of the users "home" directories rom one location on the # desktop to another location also on the desktop? This seems stupid. # # A: I am worried that automaticly synchronizing the home directory with the server directory could lose data. For example, # the automatic synchronization will likely be based on time stamps. Imagine that a user regularly changes files on his/her # desktop and then the synchronization, when works properly propogates those changes to the server because they have a # new timestamp. If the server's clock gets out of whack, the server may appear to have newer versions of files then # the desktop, and now the users changes are overwritten. BUT if the user also has a local differential backup, the user will # eventually figure out that their data is whack and they will be able to go back to their differential backup and pull out # the correct version and fix the clock on the server. No data lost. #