[clue-tech] Detecting media change

[David L. Anselmi]

David L. Willson wrote:
[...]
> Very nice, Dave.  You pimped Bacula; have you compared it to BackupPC?  That's the only
> one that sorta tempts me to leave behind my growing pile of steaming script.

I haven't tried BackupPC.  One difference is that bacula has a client on 
the backed-up machine.  That may not matter much on Linux but doing just 
rsync or CIFS for Windows seems inadequate (unless you're just backing 
up a Windows backup file).  But I don't have to back up any Windows boxes.

The interface for BackupPC looks like it might be nicer than Bacula, 
which has a clunky command line.  For normal stuff it is OK but I don't 
like doing more complex things with it.

Given that I back up to disk, and I don't need fancy full/incremental 
strategies or scheduling I'm thinking that rdiff-backup would probably 
suit me better.  I think it would be more efficient than keeping many 
monthly/weekly/daily backups around and trying to get them to rotate. 
(Not that rotation is hard, just that finding and deleting unneeded 
volumes is tedious when they pop up.)

Nate suggested backup-ninja and that might have a nice interface.  But 
since it's just a front end to drive other things I figured I'd just use 
the others directly--I don't have to manage lots of different tools and 
I do have to have a clue about what the back end is doing.  But maybe 
I'm missing out.

But in short, I'd recommend switching to a better tool than a glowing 
pile of script, whatever it is.  Take the next time you have to extend 
it as the chance to invest in learning something else.

Dave