[Discuss] Possible backup scenarios for a 500GB drive

[Alan W. Irwin]

On 2007-10-27 17:46-0700 chris wakefield wrote:

> OnOctober 26, 2007 01:00:43 pm Daniel M German wrote:
>> Have you thought of using subversion as a home-directory-backup
>> mechanism? I use it like that and to synchronize across
>> computers. Works great.
>>
>> Of course the best/simplest/easiest backup system is being released
>> today, but it costs money and runs on a very small subset of
>> computers. It will change the way _some_ people do their personal
>> backups, I am sure.
>>
>> I used to use backupPC. Works great, incremental backups, it waits
>> until the computer connects to the network to backup. But it is a pain
>> to administer. I stop using it since I upgraded my linux box.
>>
>> --dmg
> Daniel, what is subversion like to set up? ..... too easy, easy, OK or unix
> man page hard?

I am sure Daniel will want to answer this question, but I would like to
answer as well because I have had a lot of really good recent experience
with subversion as a result of converting 6 different SourceForge projects
from CVS to subversion, and then just using subversion from then on for each
of the projects.

Setting up a local subversion repository and learning how to use a
subversion client is easy if you have had prior experience with CVS or some
other version control system, and you are comfortable with the command line.
If you have never ever used a version control system getting started with
subversion will be harder. However, if you plan to work with computers at
all, then I believe version control system skills are worth developing, and
subversion is an excellent starting system to help you do that because it is
so well documented in the downloadable book at http://svnbook.red-bean.com/.
Also, don't be intimidated by the size of the book.  The quick-start part of
the book at http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.4/svn-book.html#svn.intro does
exactly what its title says.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of
Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
__________________________

Linux-powered Science
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