Runlevel for taking backups

Barrucadu · 2010-05-31 22:11:50

I'm sure I've seen somewhere a recommendation to use runlevel one to take backups to ensure filesystem consistency, however that kills automation unless I handle it through inittab, which seems a bit backwards. So, how essential is having an unchanging filesystem when running rsync to backup everything and how else could I ensure a stable filesystem without runlevel switching? I thought about remounting partitions read-only, but that doesn't work if something is using them.

Last edited by Barrucadu (2010-05-31 22:12:25)

byte · 2010-06-01 03:57:29

LVM snapshots come to mind ...

bruce · 2010-06-01 07:12:38

I'd suggest that its primarily important to "ensure filesystem consistency" when using a tool like dd (ie. something that's interacting with the disk on a block type level) by comparison to a (relatively) high level tool like rsync, I suggest you'd be fine....
Although this is all (primarily) just guess work (although I'd like to say hypothesis :-p ), so take it or leave it

fukawi2 · 2010-06-01 08:32:57

Doing file-system level backups are generally fine* without changing run-levels.

As bruce mentioned, if you want to do block-level backups using dd or dump then it becomes important.

At the end of the day, doing the backup is only half the job. You have to do test restores as well, so that will highlight if you have any issues with your backup stage.

* Exceptions to this are things like database files. The files will backup OK, but if the database is running, then you've backed them up in an "open" state which the DBMS may not like recovering from in a restore situation. Text files, music, movies, documents etc should be fine.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-05-31 22:11:50

Runlevel for taking backups

#2 2010-06-01 03:57:29

Re: Runlevel for taking backups

#3 2010-06-01 07:12:38

Re: Runlevel for taking backups

#4 2010-06-01 08:32:57

Re: Runlevel for taking backups

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