[Box Backup] Upgrading the client

[Ben Summers]

On 24 Sep 2004, at 09:59, richard_eigenmann wrote:

> I'm not sure I follow.
>
> If I look at my own upgrade behaviour over the last few years: 
> Typically I
> start off with a reasonably working machine which is ageing. In the 
> mean time
> the Linux Distro has been upgraded. Hans Reiser has introduced a new 
> version
> of the filesystem. The Crypto-thingy from SuSE insists on longer 
> passwords,
> the disks are too small and data subdirectories are strewn around spare
> partitions. The new box arrives. I stick an up to date SuSE distro on 
> it,
> partition the drive in a way that the fragmented subdirs all fit on one
> partition again, set up encryption for the data partition if it's a 
> laptop.
> Then I copy all the data over to the new box and keep it in sync with 
> Unison
> whilst I run the new box in parallel for a few weeks until it actually 
> talks
> to the USB camera, CD Burner, Scanner, Printer and anything else that 
> you
> never thought could not work (it has come a long way I must say). When
> everything is stable the old machine gets decomissioned and starts a 
> new life
> with one of my parents.
>
> By copying the data instead of dd-ing the filesystem across I get 
> whatever
> benefits the new filesystem has to offer. Without checksumming the 
> files
> boxbackup has no way to recognize that the file on the new machine was
> already backed up.
>
> Is my upgrade method entirely uncommon? Would an administrator not do 
> the
> same on an important data server in a network? What am I missing?

Maybe it's just the BSD world which has nice stable filesystems and 
things which aren't randomly tweeked all the time.

Anyway, as long as you copy your files using a method which preserves 
the timestamps (most methods in fact), everything will be fine. And 
even if you don't manage to preserve them, if the files are bigger than 
the threshold set in the config file (64k by default) then the 
checksums will be checked anyway, avoiding an unnecessary upload.

Ben