[mythtv-users] DBbackups

Jan Ceuleers jan.ceuleers at gmail.com
Sat Dec 24 06:38:37 UTC 2016


On 24/12/16 05:18, Mike Holden wrote:
> rsync -av --delete -e ssh mythtv at puzzle:/backup/puzzle/ /backup/puzzle/

A more featureful version of this (which I use) is dirvish
(www.dirvish.org). This is a wrapper for rsync which enables you to make
backups incrementally but to access them as full snapshots of the
backed-up filesystem.

The principal benefit is that this enables you to keep multiple backups
without each backup consuming space for files that have remained
unchanged, since dirvish leverages rsync's ability to create hard links
for unchanged files.

Keeping multiple backups is essential, because you might not notice that
a file has been damaged (through a malfunction in the machine or between
the ears) until after the damaged file has already been backed up. If
your backup destroys the previous backup it's a bit useless in this
situation. I create weekly backups which I keep for 3 months.

Anyway, I realise that the topic of this thread is database backups, and
that database files are extremely unlikely to remain unchanged between
backups, but I submit that it's best to use a single tool for all one's
backup needs.


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