On Sat, Jan 31, 2009 at 1:36 AM, Predrag Punosevac <punoseva...@gmail.com> wrote: > Dear All, > > I am seeking advice about the backup strategies and possible use > of CVS to accomplish this task. > > I happen to use 4-5 different computer on the daily basis for my work. > I use my laptop, desktop, and a file server at work as well as my personal > desktop and my wife's laptop at home. > It is of paramount importance for me that my files are in sync on all > 5 computers > for two reasons. I want to start working always with the latest and > most up to date version of files regardless of the computer which I am using. > Secondly, if a HDD dies on one or even three-four computers at the same moment > of time I will still have backup copy to recover the work. > > Up until now I have used the combination of tar, rarely dd, and my > home brown scripts > to accomplish above task. I would always start work by running the > script which would > pull up the tar files either from the file server of USB drive and > untar them on my computer. > After I finish work I would run the script to tar specific directory > I was working on and push > them back to file server and a USB drive. > > However it did happen to me that I forgot to run the script once or > twice in the past which > cause me great deal of frustration. Suddenly, I would have to > different versions of the > same file at two different computers and maybe the third older version > on my file server. > It also happen to me in the bast that I modify the files and I > realized that modification > sucked but I could not recover specific older version of particular file. > I do periodically burn DVDs with entire home directory, date it and > keep it on the shelf. > > Are there any advantages of using CVS over my present method or I am > just hallucinating. > It looks to me that CVS could help me utilize pull+push strategy for > backing up the files but > would give me advantage over the tar and dd by allowing me incremental > updates as well as > keeping the past snapshots of my work. > > I have seen a thread about 2-3 months ago on misc in which there was a > similar question > by a OpenBSD user who wanted to keep his /etc on his firewall machines > up to date as > well as back up configuration files in the case of the disaster by CVS. > > I am open for any suggestions but I do have a strong preference for > the tools from the base > of the system. I noticed couple ports with poor man tools for > accomplishing above tasks. > > Thanks, > Predrag > >
Mercurial would suit you nicely. It's distributed version control. so you don't have to pull down the whole damn repository every time, it's got a solid merge engine, and you can revert to versions pretty easily. Simply clone the central repository onto each individual box, and at the beginning of work run an update. At the end, commit and push your changes back to central server. -HKS
