Backing up a linux server?

[reggiep]

I'm still only a linux newbie so forgive me if this eems a stupid question.

I have installed fog on an ubuntu desktop machine and zimbra on a ubuntu server just to see if I could and to see what they were like.

Now if i want to keep them I am wondering what I would need to do to back them up!

Can anyone give me any ideas?

 

Thanks

[_Bob_]

To back up Zimbra you basically need to copy the /opt/zimbra directory. There are some scripts which will do this using rsync and mail you the results here:

 

Open Source Edition Backup Procedure - Zimbra :: Wiki

 

[kesomir]

rsync

rdiff-backup

tar

 

Look into these. For zimbra - there are some bash scripts on the zimbra site (open source section) for automatically performing an rsync backup of zimbra while runing, halting zimbra, executing another rsync to match anything that changed during the backup (small so tiny downtime), then starting it again - you schedule all this with cron.

 

You can automate this to archive to another disk in your server or to another server over network.

 

http://wiki.zimbra.com/index.php?title=Open_Source_Edition_Backup_Procedure

 

I recommend either 1.4 or 1.5

 

lol, just realised _Bob_ posted the samelink above

Edited December 17, 2008 by kesomir

[dhicks]

Now if i want to keep them I am wondering what I would need to do to back them up!

 

You might also want to look at Logical Volume Management (LVM) for Linux. Rather than having fixed-size disk partitions it lets you have dynamically resizeable filesystems. You can take "snapshots" of those filesystems - backup images of an entire filesystem, ready to be copied to removeable disk or similar. Defiantly worth a look before you get to the stage where your server is in daily use, it'll be less difficult to change stuff around now when there's no-one to complain if it's down!

 

--

David Hicks