[Box Backup] Boxbackup beginner - Various questions.

[Ben Summers]

On 6 Mar 2006, at 10:21, Tobias Balle-Petersen wrote:

> Hello...
>
> I have recently learned about boxbackup, and I am very impressed so  
> far. I
> have a server and client set up on OS X machines, and everything  
> seems to
> run just fine. I have a few questions I have not been able to find
> documented on the sites (wiki/homepage).
>
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>
> Question 1:
> Currently my server runs with just one raid file. I want to expand  
> to a
> three disk userspace raid setup in the near future. Can I change my
> current config and have boxbackup create the missing two raid-disk
> directories for me? Would I have to edit raidfile.conf manually ? My
> current raidfile.conf is seen below.
>
>
> disc0
> {
>         SetNumber = 0
>         BlockSize = 2048
>         Dir0 = /Volumes/raid/box
>         Dir1 = /Volumes/raid/box
>         Dir2 = /Volumes/raid/box
> }

If you change the config file, the directories won't be created for  
you, and the existing non-RAID files will not be converted into the  
RAID versions. You will need to start from scratch.

Be aware that the recovery tools are not complete. If a disc fails,  
you will be able to get your data back, but you will have to start  
again with uploading all the data.


>
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>
> Question 2:
> I plan to back up 1TB+ of data. Is this feasible with boxbackup?  
> Theres is
> a daily growth of data of about 2GB.

This should be fine. However, it does depend on how it's all laid  
out. If it's a few big files, then no problem. But thousands of small  
files in a single directory can make things a bit sluggish.

>
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>
> Question 3:
> When restoring on the client, do I have do stop bbackupd before  
> starting
> the restore?

No, but it's probably advisable.

> I tried to restore with bbackupd running and restore was
> painfully slow ?

It's not the fastest protocol ever, but it shouldn't be "painfully  
slow".

> Server and client are on the same 100Mbps network.
> Restore eventually failed.

With what error?

>
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>
> Question 4:
> Im experimenting with regex in my client config. For some reason, I  
> cant
> seem to get even the simplest rules right. Backing up my users
> home-folders I want to ignore mp3 files, so I have tried adding the
> example in the documentation and variations of it. The all result  
> in the
> "Exception caught (Common BadRegularExpression 1/31)" in the client  
> log.
> The client is an OS X machine (10.4)
>
> homes
> {
>     Path = /Volumes/noriB1/opendir/homes
>     REGEX_HERE
> }
>
> These are the regex's I have tried:
> ExcludeFilesRegex = *.(mp3|MP3)$
> ExcludeFilesRegex = *.mp3
> ExcludeFilesRegex = *.mp3*
> ExcludeFilesRegex = *.mp3$
>
> What am I doing wrong??

bbackupd uses whatever form of regexs provided by your platform. On  
Mac OS X, it's not the one described in the generate config file. Do

    man re_format

as suggested by the comments in that file!

But try

    ExcludeFilesRegex = .*\.mp3$

instead.


>
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>
> Question 5:
> Would it be possible for a client to backup to two servers at the  
> "same"
> time?

Yes.

> I would like to have both onsite and offsite. Would I need to run
> two clients with different configurations?

Yes.

Or you could rsync the store from the onsite to the offsite server at  
regular intervals.

Ben