How The Backup Process Has Changed [LWN.net]

How The Backup Process Has Changed

Posted Nov 29, 2007 15:12 UTC (Thu) by jongeek (subscriber, #39233)
Parent article: How The Backup Process Has Changed

Anyone else using subversion/some other version control system ?

After reading a couple of articles on the subject, I put my home directory into subversion at
the beginning of last year. I do a subversion dump every night, and back up the dumps to DVD
periodically (you can do it as often as you like). I actually use a rotating set of DVD-RWs,
writing them to DVD-R a few times a year.

Subversion manages the modified/deleted files problem, and works well with binary files. It
doesn't work too well for music/videos since it keeps a second copy of your data in the .svn
directory, but rsync/tar/DVD backups take care of those.

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How The Backup Process Has Changed

Posted Nov 29, 2007 16:39 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

There's nothing that handles people who have symlinks and hardlinks in 
their $HOME well, as far as I know. (Let alone device files, but that 
really *would* be strange.)

How The Backup Process Has Changed

Posted Nov 29, 2007 16:49 UTC (Thu) by jongeek (subscriber, #39233) [Link]

Good point about the hard links. Subversion can manage symbolic links perfectly well, though.