Re: git as backup and file sync system

From: Avery Pennarun <apenwarr@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 2, 2010, 19:49 UTC
Message-ID: <j2v32541b131004021249s738a06cfq2804b97f798ac482@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <k2mfabb9a1e1004021235xc75e25a8na941c1754fd543c@mail.gmail.com>

On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 3:35 PM, Sverre Rabbelier <srabbelier@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 12 quoted lines

> On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 13:16, Simon <turner25@gmail.com> wrote:
>>  I'm not sure if this post will be very welcome, but I'd like your
>> feedback or suggestions.  I've been reading Jon Loeliger's book about
>> git and I've understood many many things.  I'm interested in using git
>> as a backup and sync system between computers.
>
> You might want to look into 'bup', [0] designed specifically for that
> purpose. It seems like introduction post about it on apenwarr.ca is
> down though [1].
>
> [0] http://github.com/apenwarr/bup
> [1] http://apenwarr.ca/log/?m=201001#04

Yeah, sorry, apenwarr.ca is flakey at the best of times.  It takes after me :)

Disclaimer: bup does lots of neat backup-related stuff, but it doesn't
*yet* support detailed metadata.  We're working on it:
http://groups.google.com/group/bup-list/browse_thread/thread/e899a579a6f7ae55

If you're only storing a relatively small number of files (say /etc), then something like etckeeper might do what you want. Or more generally, metastore (which etckeeper uses): http://david.hardeman.nu/software.php

Unfortunately neither git nor metastore can handle the high data volumes that bup is aimed at (ie. your entire filesystem, including huge files), which is why bup exists. Give it a few weeks and we should have some decent metadata handling in place though.

Have fun,

Avery