Backup

As DX Spider runs on Linux it is very simple to keep a constant back up of DX spider either onboard, off-board, or even somewhere remote.

To install a backup of your node your new system will need to install dxspider and its dependencies, and then copy your existing ~/spider/* and sub-directories over the top of your new installation. This should bring your whole configuration, connections, scripts, crontab etc.

The rsync package will be used to copy ~/spider/* to your backup location.

rsync -ar /home/sysop/ /home/sysop/usb1/

Running this command once will copy all files in /home/sysop/ into the location /home/sysop/usb1/ In this case usb1 is a usb thumb drive that's plugged into the computer running DX Spider

In order to have the rsync command run frequently, to capture changes, it's added to the computer's crontab as explained at the Linux Handbook

Using this method, even after reboot, rsync will run as often as crontab makes it, and when there is a system failure, or you want to add a test node to your setup, use the contest of your thumb drive to quickly copy across your original configuration