[PLUG] Pre-deployment Check: dirvish

[Dale Snell]

On Thu, 10 Dec 2009 06:15:39 -0800
Rich Shepard <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com> wrote:

> On Wed, 9 Dec 2009, Dale Snell wrote:
> 
> > If you specify bank: as having a directory "current", then that
> > directory needs to exist.  Your vault directory would be contained
> > within "../current".  Within that vault directory, you need to have
> > a subdirectory "dirvish" containing the "default.conf" file.  OTOH,
> > if you want "current" to be your vault, _it_ contains
> > "dirvish/default.conf", and is _not_ in the bank specification.
> > Your "runall:" entry specifies the vaults you want to back up.
> 
> Dale,
> 
>    I tried following the HOWTO Web page and find it inconsistent and
> ambiguous. That's why I wrote for review of the files.

Oh, I quite agree.  They *are* confusing, which is why I stuck all those
comments in my config files.  I don't want to have to wade through the
documentation (*gark!*) again. 

>    I don't care what the bank and vault names are, as long as it
> works. I can change the bank name to dirvish, since the HOWTO
> suggests that I need a directory by that name containing the
> default.conf. As for vaults, I'm backing up only the one host, and I
> want all partitions (except /proc since that's generated on the fly,
> I believe) included.

Okay, I can see that.  The point I was trying to make was that if you
specify a directory in your bank: line, that directory has to exist, or
dirvish will fail.  I'm not certain that dirvish expects the dirvish
subdirectory to exist.  I suspect it does, though, so I built my file
structure that way.  For grins, here's what my dirvish file structure
looks like:

/mnt
`-- Backups
    |-- eddore
    |   |-- eddore-boot/...
    |   `-- <other eddore partitions>/...
    |-- musicdata
    |   `-- oggvorbis/...
    `-- valeron
        |-- <other valeron partitions>/...
        `-- valeron-home/dirvish
            |            |--default.conf
            |            `--default.hist
            |--<image_directory>
            |  |--index.bz2
            |  |--log
            |  |--summary
            |  `--tree
            |     `--<backed-up filesystem(s)>
            `--<other image directories>

My banks are /mnt/Backups/{eddore,musicdata,valeron}.  The vaults are
the next level of directories beneath those (i.e., eddore-boot,
valeron-home, oggvorbis, etc).  The vaults are listed in the runall:
entry.  (Eddore and valeron are my desktop and laptop, respectively, and
musicdata is a portable USB disk drive containing my ripped CDs.)  When
I run dirvish-runall, it executes the command "dirvish --vault <vault>"
for every vault listed under runall:.

Obviously, your setup would be much simpler, since you're backing up
your entire filesystem into one vault.  Note that dirvish creates the
default.hist file in the dirvish sub-directory.

If there are errors, dirvish will write the log and an "rsync_error"
file into the relevant image directory.  These can be very useful in
troubleshooting.  Also, I found that the strace command, especially
"strace -e trace=file" was my new best friend.  :-)

You've probably got ssh set up already, but if not, make sure that you
do.  I know the docs say that you won't need ssh if you're backing up
locally, but I found that dirvish wanted ssh there, even though I was
backing up locally.  There may be some subtlety I've missed, but it's
no big deal in this case.

Anyway, I hope this helps.

--Dale

--
Q.  What lies on the bottom of the ocean and twitches?
A.  A nervous wreck.