Archive for the 'linux' Category

want to backup your linux server? looked at a few solu­tions. been using rsync running daily via a cron job which worked well
made a script (called sys_backup) that looks like this…
first do a ‘touch sys_backup’ on the command line without the quotes (in fact that applies through­out this page…open it with your favour­ite text editor and paste the fol­low­ing in (repla­cing /media/backup/local with the path to your backup directory).

#!/bin/bash
rsync –avp –delete /var /media/backup/local
rsync –avp –delete /etc /media/backup/local
rsync –avp — delete /home /media/backup/local

to run the script become root (as you’ll need that per­mis­sion for /var and /etc) and run ‘./sys_backup’ without the quotes.
however, i wanted some­thing a bit more com­pre­hens­ive (and incre­mental) without me putting in too much effort. looked at bacula. too com­plic­ated. settled on backupn­inja. to install on a debian based system, as root, issue the fol­low­ing ‘apt-get install backupn­inja’ to grab it from the repos. next we want to edit the main con­fig­ur­a­tion file. ‘joe /etc/backupninja.conf’ will open it and you can change the para­met­ers to suit your setup. mine’s only a local backup so it looks a bit like this.
#                          |\_
# B A C K U P N I N J A   /()/
#                         ‘\|
# main con­fig­ur­a­tion file
#

# how verbose to make the logs
# 5 — Debug­ging mes­sages     (and below)
# 4 — Inform­a­tional mes­sages (and below)
# 3 — Warn­ings               (and below)
# 2 — Errors                 (and below)
# 1 — Fatal errors           (only)
log­level = 4

# send a summary of the backup status to
# this email address:
reporte­m­ail = col@localhost

# if set to ‘yes’, a report email will be gen­er­ated
# even if all modules repor­ted success. (default = yes)
reportsuc­cess = yes

# if set to ‘yes’, info mes­sages from hand­lers will be
# sent into the email (default = no)
reportinfo = no

# if set to ‘yes’, a report email will be gen­er­ated
# even if there was no error. (default = yes)
report­warn­ing = yes

# if set to ‘yes’, disk space usage will be included in
# the backup email report
reportspace = yes

# where to rsync the backupninja.log to be aggreg­ated in
# a ninjare­port
reporthost =

# what user to connect to reporthost to sync the
# backupninja.log
reportuser = ninja

# where on the reporthost should the report go
# NOTE: the name of the log will be used in the report,
# use a glob­ally unique name, prefer­ably the host­name
report­dir­ect­ory = /var/lib/backupninja/reports

# set to the admin­is­tra­tion group that is allowed to
# read/write con­fig­ur­a­tion files in /etc/backup.d
admin­group = root

#######################################################
# for most install­a­tions, the defaults below are good #
#######################################################

# where to log:
logfile = /var/log/backupninja.log

# dir­ect­ory where all the backup con­fig­ur­a­tion files live
con­fig­dir­ect­ory = /etc/backup.d

# where backupn­inja helper scripts are found
script­dir­ect­ory = /usr/share/backupninja

# where backupn­inja libs are found
lib­dir­ect­ory = /usr/lib/backupninja

# whether to use colors in the log file
usecol­ors = yes

# default value for ‘when’
when = every­day at 01:00

# if running vserv­ers, set to yes
vserv­ers = no

# pro­grams paths
# SLAPCAT=/usr/sbin/slapcat
# LDAPSEARCH=/usr/bin/ldapsearch
# RDIFFBACKUP=/usr/bin/rdiff-backup
# CSTREAM=/usr/bin/cstream
# MYSQL=/usr/bin/mysql
# MYSQLHOTCOPY=/usr/bin/mysqlhotcopy
# MYSQLDUMP=/usr/bin/mysqldump
# PSQL=/usr/bin/psql
# PGSQLDUMP=/usr/bin/pg_dump
# PGSQLDUMPALL=/usr/bin/pg_dumpall
# GZIP=/bin/gzip
# GZIP_OPTS=’–rsyncable’
# RSYNC=/usr/bin/rsync
# VSERVERINFO=/usr/sbin/vserver-info
# VSERVER=/usr/sbin/vserver
# VROOTDIR=/var/lib/vservers

most of the set­tings have been left as they are. save the file with a ctrl+k+x in joe.
i’m using rdiff only but there are other options avail­able. see the backupn­inja wiki for more info.
now to get an action (or backup job) sorted. from the wiki above we’re going to use the action.rdiff file. first we want to cd into the backup.d dir­ect­ory like so. as root ‘cd /etc/backup.d’. then ‘wget http://cloudplasma.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/action.rdiff’ to down­load the default con­fig­ur­a­tion file. do a ‘joe action.rdiff’ to open it and tweak it to your liking. mine resembles the fol­low­ing…
######################################################
## source section
## (where the files to be backed up are coming from)

[source]

# an optional sub­dir­ect­ory below ‘dir­ect­ory’ (see [dest])
label = box

# only local type is cur­rently sup­por­ted
type = local

# how many days of data to keep
keep = 185

# files to include in the backup
# (sup­ports glob­bing with ‘*’)
include = /var/spool/cron/crontabs
include = /var/backups
include = /etc
include = /root
include = /home
include = /usr/local/bin
include = /usr/local/sbin
include = /var/lib/dpkg/status
include = /var/lib/dpkg/status-old

# files to exclude from the backup
# (sup­ports glob­bing with ‘*’)
#exclude = /home/*/.gnupg

######################################################
## des­tin­a­tion section
## (where the files are copied to)

[dest]

# remote or local? If local, you dont need to specify a host below
type = local

# the machine which will receive the backups
host = backup

# put the backups under this dir­ect­ory
dir­ect­ory = /media/backup/ninja

# make the files owned by this user
# note: you must be able to ssh backupuser@backhost
# without spe­cify­ing a pass­word
# user = col

save it with ctrl+k+x as before. now it should run at 1.00 am every day. you can try it now by running ‘backupn­ija –n’ as root.
if you run into per­mis­sion errors make sure that action.rdiff has 400 per­mis­sions (‘chmod 400 action.rdiff’) and that joe hasn’t left a temp version of action.rdiff in the backup dir­ect­ory (‘rm action.rdiff~’).