git as a backup tool?

	Hi,

Has anyone considered using git as a backup tool?  I.e.
  - put your whole file system in git
  - do `git add .; git commit -a' from cron
  - copy .git to external media once in a while
  - clean up old stuff (unused and older than xx days) from .git

Thanks!

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

						Geert

--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@linux-m68k.org

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
							    -- Linus Torvalds

Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:

Has anyone considered using git as a backup tool?  I.e.

At the very least you would have a lot of chgrp/chown work to do after a
"restore".  Git stores file mode, but not ownership information, ACL's
or extended attributes.

I found this out when I tried using git to backup part of BOINC
development server.  Various files and directories had to have different
ownership and extended attributes (for SELinux).
-- 
Ron Parker

On 5/14/07, Geert Uytterhoeven [off-list ref] wrote:

        Hi,

Has anyone considered using git as a backup tool?  I.e.
  - put your whole file system in git
  - do `git add .; git commit -a' from cron
  - copy .git to external media once in a while
  - clean up old stuff (unused and older than xx days) from .git

I'm using git to backup my private email, all in Maildir format, in
that manner.  In addition, I push to a remote bare repository
automatically, using ssh host keys.

The most annoying issue was trying to prevent spam getting stuck in
the mail history.  I do this by having the "unsure" mail folder in a
different place, and then having a symlink from the mail store point
there so mutt can still find it easily if needed.

Backing up a whole home directory would require careful thought about
what _not_ to backup, similar to the spam issue.  You probably
wouldn't want to backup things that you download off the net and can
easily retrieve again, like foo-1.2.tar.gz etc.

I'm not sure what you mean by cleaning up old stuff.  git (or at least
my usage of it) requires the whole history to be in the repository.  I
haven't looked at shallow clones or other ways to prune history.



-- 
Virus found in this message.

On Tue, May 15, 2007 at 01:09:06PM +0800, Russell wrote:

 On 5/14/07, Geert Uytterhoeven [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

        Hi,

Has anyone considered using git as a backup tool?  I.e.
  - put your whole file system in git
  - do `git add .; git commit -a' from cron
  - copy .git to external media once in a while
  - clean up old stuff (unused and older than xx days) from .git

 I'm using git to backup my private email, all in Maildir format, in
 that manner.  In addition, I push to a remote bare repository
 automatically, using ssh host keys.

 The most annoying issue was trying to prevent spam getting stuck in
 the mail history.  I do this by having the "unsure" mail folder in a
 different place, and then having a symlink from the mail store point
 there so mutt can still find it easily if needed.

 Backing up a whole home directory would require careful thought about
 what _not_ to backup, similar to the spam issue.  You probably
 wouldn't want to backup things that you download off the net and can
 easily retrieve again, like foo-1.2.tar.gz etc.

 I'm not sure what you mean by cleaning up old stuff.  git (or at least
 my usage of it) requires the whole history to be in the repository.  I
 haven't looked at shallow clones or other ways to prune history.

There was already a discussion about using git for backup in [1], which
is probabily worth reading. For cleaning up old history Junio explained a
very elegant solution in [2].

-Peter


[1]: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/33887
[2]: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/34455