threads / discuss / 8144

git as a backup tool?

Subject: git as a backup tool?

## tl;dr

4 messages between May 14, 2007 and May 15, 2007.

replies: 3people: 4as markdown or json

Geert Uytterhoeven· May 14, 2007, 11:48 UTC · lore

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

Ron Parker· May 14, 2007, 22:53 UTC · re: Geert Uytterhoeven · lore

RE: git as a backup tool?

> 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

Russell· May 15, 2007, 05:09 UTC · re: Geert Uytterhoeven · lore

Re: git as a backup tool?

On 5/14/07, Geert Uytterhoeven <geert@linux-m68k.org> wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

>         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.

Peter Baumann· May 15, 2007, 05:51 UTC · re: Russell · lore

Re: git as a backup tool?

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

Show 27 quoted lines

>  On 5/14/07, Geert Uytterhoeven <geert@linux-m68k.org> 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.
>

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