| BackupPC |
This documentation describes BackupPC version 3.3.0, released on 14 Apr 2013.
BackupPC is a high-performance, enterprise-grade system for backing up Unix, Linux, WinXX, and MacOSX PCs, desktops and laptops to a server's disk. BackupPC is highly configurable and easy to install and maintain.
Given the ever decreasing cost of disks and raid systems, it is now practical and cost effective to backup a large number of machines onto a server's local disk or network storage. For some sites this might be the complete backup solution. For other sites additional permanent archives could be created by periodically backing up the server to tape.
Features include:
A clever pooling scheme minimizes disk storage and disk I/O. Identical files across multiple backups of the same or different PC are stored only once (using hard links), resulting in substantial savings in disk storage and disk writes.
Optional compression provides additional reductions in storage (around 40%). The CPU impact of compression is low since only new files (those not already in the pool) need to be compressed.
A powerful http/cgi user interface allows administrators to view the current status, edit configuration, add/delete hosts, view log files, and allows users to initiate and cancel backups and browse and restore files from backups.
The http/cgi user interface has internationalization (i18n) support, currently providing English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese-Brazilian and Chinese
No client-side software is needed. On WinXX the standard smb protocol is used to extract backup data. On linux, unix or MacOSX clients, rsync, tar (over ssh/rsh/nfs) or ftp is used to extract backup data. Alternatively, rsync can also be used on WinXX (using cygwin), and Samba could be installed on the linux or unix client to provide smb shares).
Flexible restore options. Single files can be downloaded from any backup directly from the CGI interface. Zip or Tar archives for selected files or directories from any backup can also be downloaded from the CGI interface. Finally, direct restore to the client machine (using smb or tar) for selected files or directories is also supported from the CGI interface.
BackupPC supports mobile environments where laptops are only intermittently connected to the network and have dynamic IP addresses (DHCP). Configuration settings allow machines connected via slower WAN connections (eg: dial up, DSL, cable) to not be backed up, even if they use the same fixed or dynamic IP address as when they are connected directly to the LAN.
Flexible configuration parameters allow multiple backups to be performed in parallel, specification of which shares to backup, which directories to backup or not backup, various schedules for full and incremental backups, schedules for email reminders to users and so on. Configuration parameters can be set system-wide or also on a per-PC basis.
Users are sent periodic email reminders if their PC has not recently been backed up. Email content, timing and policies are configurable.
BackupPC is Open Source software hosted by SourceForge.
A full backup is a complete backup of a share. BackupPC can be configured to do a full backup at a regular interval (typically weekly). BackupPC can be configured to keep a certain number of full backups. Exponential expiry is also supported, allowing full backups with various vintages to be kept (for example, a settable number of most recent weekly fulls, plus a settable number of older fulls that are 2, 4, 8, or 16 weeks apart).
An incremental backup is a backup of files that have changed since the last successful full or incremental backup. Starting in BackupPC 3.0 multi-level incrementals are supported. A full backup has level 0. A new incremental of level N will backup all files that have changed since the most recent backup of a lower level. $Conf{IncrLevels} is used to specify the level of each successive incremental. The default value is all level 1, which makes the behavior the same as earlier versions of BackupPC: each incremental will back up all the files that changed since the last full (level 0).
For SMB and tar, BackupPC uses the modification time (mtime) to determine which files have changed since the last lower-level backup. That means SMB and tar incrementals are not able to detect deleted files, renamed files or new files whose modification time is prior to the last lower-level backup.
Rsync is more clever: any files whose attributes have changed (ie: uid, gid, mtime, modes, size) since the last full are backed up. Deleted, new files and renamed files are detected by Rsync incrementals.
BackupPC can also be configured to keep a certain number of incremental backups, and to keep a smaller number of very old incremental backups. If multi-level incrementals are specified then it is likely that more incrementals will need to be kept since lower-level incrementals (and the full backup) are needed to reconstruct a higher-level incremental.
BackupPC "fills-in" incremental backups when browsing or restoring, based on the levels of each backup, giving every backup a "full" appearance. This makes browsing and restoring backups much easier: you can restore from any one backup independent of whether it was an incremental or full.
When a full backup fails or is canceled, and some files have already been backed up, BackupPC keeps a partial backup containing just the files that were backed up successfully. The partial backup is removed when the next successful backup completes, or if another full backup fails resulting in a newer partial backup. A failed full backup that has not backed up any files, or any failed incremental backup, is removed; no partial backup is saved in these cases.
The partial backup may be browsed or used to restore files just like a successful full or incremental backup.
With the rsync transfer method the partial backup is used to resume the next full backup, avoiding the need to retransfer the file data already in the partial backup.
BackupPC pools identical files using hardlinks. By "identical files" we mean files with identical contents, not necessary the same permissions, ownership or modification time. Two files might have different permissions, ownership, or modification time but will still be pooled whenever the contents are identical. This is possible since BackupPC stores the file meta-data (permissions, ownership, and modification time) separately from the file contents.
Based on your site's requirements you need to decide what your backup policy is. BackupPC is not designed to provide exact re-imaging of failed disks. See Limitations for more information. However, the addition of tar transport for linux/unix clients, plus full support for special file types and unix attributes in v1.4.0 likely means an exact image of a linux/unix file system can be made.
BackupPC saves backups onto disk. Because of pooling you can relatively economically keep several weeks of old backups.
At some sites the disk-based backup will be adequate, without a secondary tape backup. This system is robust to any single failure: if a client disk fails or loses files, the BackupPC server can be used to restore files. If the server disk fails, BackupPC can be restarted on a fresh file system, and create new backups from the clients. The chance of the server disk failing can be made very small by spending more money on increasingly better RAID systems. However, there is still the risk of catastrophic events like fires or earthquakes that can destroy both the BackupPC server and the clients it is backing up if they are physically nearby.
Some sites might choose to do periodic backups to tape or cd/dvd. This backup can be done perhaps weekly using the archive function of BackupPC.
Other users have reported success with removable disks to rotate the BackupPC data drives, or using rsync to mirror the BackupPC data pool offsite.
The BackupPC Open Source project is hosted on SourceForge. The home page can be found at:
http://backuppc.sourceforge.netThis page has links to the current documentation, the SourceForge project page and general information.
The SourceForge project page is at:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/backuppcThis page has links to the current releases of BackupPC.
BackupPC has a Wiki at http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net. Everyone is encouraged to contribute to the Wiki. Anyone with a SourceForge account can edit the Wiki.
The old FAQ is at http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/faq, but is deprecated in favor of the Wiki.
Three BackupPC mailing lists exist for announcements (backuppc-announce), developers (backuppc-devel), and a general user list for support, asking questions or any other topic relevant to BackupPC (backuppc-users).
The lists are archived on SourceForge and Gmane. The SourceForge lists are not always up to date and the searching is limited, so Gmane is a good alternative. See:
http://news.gmane.org/index.php?prefix=gmane.comp.sysutils.backup.backuppc
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum=backuppc-usersYou can subscribe to these lists by visiting:
http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-announce
http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users
http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-develThe backuppc-announce list is moderated and is used only for important announcements (eg: new versions). It is low traffic. You only need to subscribe to one of backuppc-announce and backuppc-users: backuppc-users also receives any messages on backuppc-announce.
The backuppc-devel list is only for developers who are working on BackupPC. Do not post questions or support requests there. But detailed technical discussions should happen on this list.
To post a message to the backuppc-users list, send an email to
backuppc-users@lists.sourceforge.netDo not send subscription requests to this address!
If you want to mirror linux or unix files or directories to a remote server you should use rsync, http://rsync.samba.org. BackupPC uses rsync as a transport mechanism; if you are already an rsync user you can think of BackupPC as adding efficient storage (compression and pooling) and a convenient user interface to rsync.
Two popular open source packages that do tape backup are Amanda (http://www.amanda.org) and Bacula (http://www.bacula.org). These packages can be used as complete solutions, or also as back ends to BackupPC to backup the BackupPC server data to tape.
Various programs and scripts use rsync to provide hardlinked backups. See, for example, Mike Rubel's site (http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots), JW Schultz's dirvish (http://www.dirvish.org/), Ben Escoto's rdiff-backup (http://www.nongnu.org/rdiff-backup), and John Bowman's rlbackup (http://www.math.ualberta.ca/imaging/rlbackup).
Unison is a utility that can do two-way, interactive, synchronization. See http://freshmeat.net/projects/unison. An external wrapper around rsync that maintains transfer data to enable two-way synchronization is drsync; see http://freshmeat.net/projects/drsync.
BackupPC provides many additional features, such as compressed storage, hardlinking any matching files (rather than just files with the same name), and storing special files without root privileges. But these other programs provide simple, effective and fast solutions and are definitely worthy of consideration.
The new features planned for future releases of BackupPC are on the Wiki at http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net.
Comments and suggestions are welcome.
BackupPC is free. I work on BackupPC because I enjoy doing it and I like to contribute to the open source community.
BackupPC already has more than enough features for my own needs. The main compensation for continuing to work on BackupPC is knowing that more and more people find it useful. So feedback is certainly appreciated, both positive and negative.
Beyond being a satisfied user and telling other people about it, everyone is encouraged to add links to http://backuppc.sourceforge.net (I'll see them via Google) or otherwise publicize BackupPC. Unlike the commercial products in this space, I have a zero budget (in both time and money) for marketing, PR and advertising, so it's up to all of you! Feel free to vote for BackupPC at http://freshmeat.net/projects/backuppc.
Also, everyone is encouraged to contribute patches, bug reports, feature and design suggestions, new code, Wiki additions (you can do those directly) and documentation corrections or improvements. Answering questions on the mailing list is a big help too.
BackupPC requires:
A linux, solaris, or unix based server with a substantial amount of free disk space (see the next section for what that means). The CPU and disk performance on this server will determine how many simultaneous backups you can run. You should be able to run 4-8 simultaneous backups on a moderately configured server.
Several users have reported significantly better performance using reiserfs compared to ext3 for the BackupPC data file system. It is also recommended you consider either an LVM or RAID setup (either in HW or SW; eg: 3Ware RAID10 or RAID5) so that you can expand the file system as necessary.
When BackupPC starts with an empty pool, all the backup data will be written to the pool on disk. After more backups are done, a higher percentage of incoming files will already be in the pool. BackupPC is able to avoid writing to disk new files that are already in the pool. So over time disk writes will reduce significantly (by perhaps a factor of 20 or more), since eventually 95% or more of incoming backup files are typically in the pool. Disk reads from the pool are still needed to do file compares to verify files are an exact match. So, with a mature pool, if a relatively fast client generates data at say 1MB/sec, and you run 4 simultaneous backups, there will be an average server disk load of about 4MB/sec reads and 0.2MB/sec writes (assuming 95% of the incoming files are in the pool). These rates will be perhaps 40% lower if compression is on.
Perl version 5.8.0 or later. If you don't have perl, please see http://www.cpan.org.
Perl modules Compress::Zlib, Archive::Zip and File::RsyncP. Try "perldoc Compress::Zlib" and "perldoc Archive::Zip" to see if you have these modules. If not, fetch them from http://www.cpan.org and see the instructions below for how to build and install them.
The File::RsyncP module is available from http://perlrsync.sourceforge.net or CPAN. You'll need to install the File::RsyncP module if you want to use Rsync as a transport method.
If you are using smb to backup WinXX machines you need smbclient and nmblookup from the samba package. You will also need nmblookup if you are backing up linux/unix DHCP machines. See http://www.samba.org. Samba versions 3.x are stable and now recommended instead of 2.x.
See http://www.samba.org for source and binaries. It's pretty easy to fetch and compile samba, and just grab smbclient and nmblookup, without doing the installation. Alternatively, http://www.samba.org has binary distributions for most platforms.
If you are using tar to backup linux/unix machines, those machines should have version 1.13.7 at a minimum, with version 1.13.20 or higher recommended. Use "tar --version" to check your version. Various GNU mirrors have the newest versions of tar; see http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/.
If you are using rsync to backup linux/unix machines you should have version 2.6.3 or higher on each client machine. See http://rsync.samba.org. Use "rsync --version" to check your version.
For BackupPC to use Rsync you will also need to install the perl File::RsyncP module, which is available from http://perlrsync.sourceforge.net. Version 0.68 or later is required.
The Apache web server, see http://www.apache.org, preferably built with mod_perl support.
BackupPC uses hardlinks to pool files common to different backups. Therefore BackupPC's data store (/var/lib/backuppc) must point to a single file system that supports hardlinks. You cannot split this file system with multiple mount points or using symbolic links to point a sub-directory to a different file system (it is ok to use a single symbolic link at the top-level directory (/var/lib/backuppc) to point the entire data store somewhere else). You can of course use any kind of RAID system or logical volume manager that combines the capacity of multiple disks into a single, larger, file system. Such approaches have the advantage that the file system can be expanded without having to copy it.
Any standard linux or unix file system supports hardlinks. NFS mounted file systems work too (provided the underlying file system supports hardlinks). But windows based FAT and NTFS file systems will not work.
Starting with BackupPC 3.1.0, run-time checks are done at startup and at the start of each backup to ensure that the file system can support hardlinks, since this is a common area of configuration problems.
Here's one real example for an environment that is backing up 65 laptops with compression off. Each full backup averages 3.2GB. Each incremental backup averages about 0.2GB. Storing one full backup and two incremental backups per laptop is around 240GB of raw data. But because of the pooling of identical files, only 87GB is used. This is without compression.
Another example, with compression on: backing up 95 laptops, where each backup averages 3.6GB and each incremental averages about 0.3GB. Keeping three weekly full backups, and six incrementals is around 1200GB of raw data. Because of pooling and compression, only 150GB is needed.
Here's a rule of thumb. Add up the disk usage of all the machines you want to backup (210GB in the first example above). This is a rough minimum space estimate that should allow a couple of full backups and at least half a dozen incremental backups per machine. If compression is on you can reduce the storage requirements by maybe 30-40%. Add some margin in case you add more machines or decide to keep more old backups.
Your actual mileage will depend upon the types of clients, operating systems and applications you have. The more uniform the clients and applications the bigger the benefit from pooling common files.
For example, the Eudora email tool stores each mail folder in a separate file, and attachments are extracted as separate files. So in the sadly common case of a large attachment emailed to many recipients, Eudora will extract the attachment into a new file. When these machines are backed up, only one copy of the file will be stored on the server, even though the file appears in many different full or incremental backups. In this sense Eudora is a "friendly" application from the point of view of backup storage requirements.
An example at the other end of the spectrum is Outlook. Everything (email bodies, attachments, calendar, contact lists) is stored in a single file, which often becomes huge. Any change to this file requires a separate copy of the file to be saved during backup. Outlook is even more troublesome, since it keeps this file locked all the time, so it cannot be read by smbclient whenever Outlook is running. See the Limitations section for more discussion of this problem.
In addition to total disk space, you should make sure you have plenty of inodes on your BackupPC data partition. Some users have reported running out of inodes on their BackupPC data partition. So even if you have plenty of disk space, BackupPC will report failures when the inodes are exhausted. This is a particular problem with ext2/ext3 file systems that have a fixed number of inodes when the file system is built. Use "df -i" to see your inode usage.
Some linux distributions now include BackupPC. The Debian distribution, supported by Ludovic Drolez, can be found at http://packages.debian.org/backuppc and is included in the current stable Debian release. On Debian, BackupPC can be installed with the command:
apt-get install backuppcIn the future there might be packages for Gentoo and other linux flavors. If the packaged version is older than the released version then you may want to install the latest version as described below.
Otherwise, manually fetching and installing BackupPC is easy. Start by downloading the latest version from http://backuppc.sourceforge.net. Hit the "Code" button, then select the "backuppc" or "backuppc-beta" package and download the latest version.
Note: most information in this step is only relevant if you build and install BackupPC yourself. If you use a package provided by a distribution, the package management system should take of installing any needed dependencies.
First off, there are five perl modules you should install. These are all optional, but highly recommended:
To enable compression, you will need to install Compress::Zlib from http://www.cpan.org. You can run "perldoc Compress::Zlib" to see if this module is installed.
To support restore via Zip archives you will need to install Archive::Zip, also from http://www.cpan.org. You can run "perldoc Archive::Zip" to see if this module is installed.
To support the RSS feature you will need to install XML::RSS, also from http://www.cpan.org. There is not need to install this module if you don't plan on using RSS. You can run "perldoc XML::RSS" to see if this module is installed.
To use rsync and rsyncd with BackupPC you will need to install File::RsyncP. You can run "perldoc File::RsyncP" to see if this module is installed. File::RsyncP is available from http://perlrsync.sourceforge.net. Version 0.68 or later is required.
To use ftp with BackupPC you will need four libraries, but actually need to install only File::Listing from http://www.cpan.org. You can run "perldoc File::Listing" to see if this module is installed. Net::FTP is a standard module. Net::FTP::RetrHandle and Net::FTP::AutoReconnect included in BackupPC distribution.
To build and install these packages you should use the cpan program. Alternatively, you can fetch the tar.gz file from http://www.cpan.org and then run these commands:
tar zxvf Archive-Zip-1.26.tar.gz
cd Archive-Zip-1.26
perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make installThe same sequence of commands can be used for each module.
Now let's move onto BackupPC itself. After fetching BackupPC-3.3.0.tar.gz, run these commands as root:
tar zxf BackupPC-3.3.0.tar.gz
cd BackupPC-3.3.0
perl configure.plIn the future this release might also have patches available on the SourceForge site. These patch files are text files, with a name of the form
BackupPC-3.3.0plN.diffwhere N is the patch level, eg: pl2 is patch-level 2. These patch files are cumulative: you only need apply the last patch file, not all the earlier patch files. If a patch file is available, eg: BackupPC-3.3.0pl2.diff, you should apply the patch after extracting the tar file:
# fetch BackupPC-3.3.0.tar.gz
# fetch BackupPC-3.3.0pl2.diff
tar zxf BackupPC-3.3.0.tar.gz
cd BackupPC-3.3.0
patch -p0 < ../BackupPC-3.3.0pl2.diff
perl configure.plA patch file includes comments that describe that bug fixes and changes. Feel free to review it before you apply the patch.
The configure.pl script also accepts command-line options if you wish to run it in a non-interactive manner. It has self-contained documentation for all the command-line options, which you can read with perldoc:
perldoc configure.plStarting with BackupPC 3.0.0, the configure.pl script by default complies with the file system hierarchy (FHS) conventions. The major difference compared to earlier versions is that by default configuration files will be stored in /etc/BackupPC rather than below the data directory, /var/lib/backuppc/conf, and the log files will be stored in /var/log/BackupPC rather than below the data directory, /var/lib/backuppc/log.
Note that distributions may choose to use different locations for BackupPC files than these defaults.
If you are upgrading from an earlier version the configure.pl script will keep the configuration files and log files in their original location.
When you run configure.pl you will be prompted for the full paths of various executables, and you will be prompted for the following information.
It is best if BackupPC runs as a special user, eg backuppc, that has limited privileges. It is preferred that backuppc belongs to a system administrator group so that sys admin members can browse BackupPC files, edit the configuration files and so on. Although configurable, the default settings leave group read permission on pool files, so make sure the BackupPC user's group is chosen restrictively.
On this installation, this is backuppc.
For security purposes you might choose to configure the BackupPC user with the shell set to /bin/false. Since you might need to run some BackupPC programs as the BackupPC user for testing purposes, you can use the -s option to su to explicitly run a shell, eg:
su -s /bin/bash backuppcDepending upon your configuration you might also need the -l option.
You need to decide where to put the data directory, below which all the BackupPC data is stored. This needs to be a big file system.
On this installation, this is /var/lib/backuppc.
You should decide where the BackupPC scripts, libraries and documentation should be installed, eg: /usr/local/BackupPC.
On this installation, this is /usr/share/backuppc.
You should decide where the BackupPC CGI script resides. This will usually be below Apache's cgi-bin directory.
It is also possible to use a different directory and use Apache's ``<Directory>'' directive to specifiy that location. See the Apache HTTP Server documentation for additional information.
On this installation, this is /usr/share/backuppc/cgi-bin.
A directory where BackupPC's images are stored so that Apache can serve them. You should ensure this directory is readable by Apache and create a symlink to this directory from the BackupPC CGI bin Directory.
In this installation the configuration and log directories are located in the following locations:
/etc/backuppc/config.pl main config file
/etc/backuppc/hosts hosts file
/etc/backuppc/pc/HOST.pl per-pc config file
/var/lib/backuppc/log/BackupPC log files, pid, statusThe configure.pl script doesn't prompt for these locations but they can be set for new installations using command-line options.
After running configure.pl, browse through the config file, /etc/backuppc/config.pl, and make sure all the default settings are correct. In particular, you will need to decide whether to use smb, tar,or rsync or ftp transport (or whether to set it on a per-PC basis) and set the relevant parameters for that transport method. See the section "Step 5: Client Setup" for more details.
The file /etc/backuppc/hosts contains the list of clients to backup. BackupPC reads this file in three cases:
Upon startup.
When BackupPC is sent a HUP (-1) signal. Assuming you installed the init.d script, you can also do this with "/etc/init.d/backuppc reload".
When the modification time of the hosts file changes. BackupPC checks the modification time once during each regular wakeup.
Whenever you change the hosts file (to add or remove a host) you can either do a kill -HUP BackupPC_pid or simply wait until the next regular wakeup period.
Each line in the hosts file contains three fields, separated by white space:
This is typically the host name or NetBios name of the client machine and should be in lower case. The host name can contain spaces (escape with a backslash), but it is not recommended.
Please read the section "How BackupPC Finds Hosts".
In certain cases you might want several distinct clients to refer to the same physical machine. For example, you might have a database you want to backup, and you want to bracket the backup of the database with shutdown/restart using $Conf{DumpPreUserCmd} and $Conf{DumpPostUserCmd}. But you also want to backup the rest of the machine while the database is still running. In the case you can specify two different clients in the host file, using any mnemonic name (eg: myhost_mysql and myhost), and use $Conf{ClientNameAlias} in myhost_mysql's config.pl to specify the real host name of the machine.
Starting with v2.0.0 the way hosts are discovered has changed and now in most cases you should specify 0 for the DHCP flag, even if the host has a dynamically assigned IP address. Please read the section "How BackupPC Finds Hosts" to understand whether you need to set the DHCP flag.
You only need to set DHCP to 1 if your client machine doesn't respond to the NetBios multicast request:
nmblookup myHostbut does respond to a request directed to its IP address:
nmblookup -A W.X.Y.ZIf you do set DHCP to 1 on any client you will need to specify the range of DHCP addresses to search is specified in $Conf{DHCPAddressRanges}.
Note also that the $Conf{ClientNameAlias} feature does not work for clients with DHCP set to 1.
This should be the unix login/email name of the user who "owns" or uses this machine. This is the user who will be sent email about this machine, and this user will have permission to stop/start/browse/restore backups for this host. Leave this blank if no specific person should receive email or be allowed to stop/start/browse/restore backups for this host. Administrators will still have full permissions.
Additional user names, separate by commas and with no white space, can be specified. These users will also have full permission in the CGI interface to stop/start/browse/restore backups for this host. These users will not be sent email about this host.
The first non-comment line of the hosts file is special: it contains the names of the columns and should not be edited.
Here's a simple example of a hosts file:
host dhcp user moreUsers
farside 0 craig jim,dave
larson 1 gary andyFour methods for getting backup data from a client are supported: smb, tar, rsync and ftp. Smb or rsync are the preferred methods for WinXX clients and rsync or tar are the preferred methods for linux/unix/MacOSX clients.
The transfer method is set using the $Conf{XferMethod} configuration setting. If you have a mixed environment (ie: you will use smb for some clients and tar for others), you will need to pick the most common choice for $Conf{XferMethod} for the main config.pl file, and then override it in the per-PC config file for those hosts that will use the other method. (Or you could run two completely separate instances of BackupPC, with different data directories, one for WinXX and the other for linux/unix, but then common files between the different machine types will duplicated.)
Here are some brief client setup notes:
One setup for WinXX clients is to set $Conf{XferMethod} to "smb". Actually, rsyncd is the better method for WinXX if you are prepared to run rsync/cygwin on your WinXX client.
If you want to use rsyncd for WinXX clients you can find a pre-packaged zip file on http://backuppc.sourceforge.net. The package is called cygwin-rsync. It contains rsync.exe, template setup files and the minimal set of cygwin libraries for everything to run. The README file contains instructions for running rsync as a service, so it starts automatically everytime you boot your machine. If you use rsync to backup WinXX machines, be sure to set $Conf{ClientCharset} correctly (eg: 'cp1252') so that the WinXX file name encoding is correctly converted to utf8.
Otherwise, to use SMB, you can either create shares for the data you want to backup or your can use the existing C$ share. To create a new share, open "My Computer", right click on the drive (eg: C), and select "Sharing..." (or select "Properties" and select the "Sharing" tab). In this dialog box you can enable sharing, select the share name and permissions.
All Windows NT based OS (NT, 2000, XP Pro), are configured by default to share the entire C drive as C$. This is a special share used for various administration functions, one of which is to grant access to backup operators. All you need to do is create a new domain user, specifically for backup. Then add the new backup user to the built in "Backup Operators" group. You now have backup capability for any directory on any computer in the domain in one easy step. This avoids using administrator accounts and only grants permission to do exactly what you want for the given user, i.e.: backup. Also, for additional security, you may wish to deny the ability for this user to logon to computers in the default domain policy.
If this machine uses DHCP you will also need to make sure the NetBios name is set. Go to Control Panel|System|Network Identification (on Win2K) or Control Panel|System|Computer Name (on WinXP). Also, you should go to Control Panel|Network Connections|Local Area Connection|Properties|Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)|Properties|Advanced|WINS and verify that NetBios is not disabled.
The relevant configuration settings are $Conf{SmbShareName}, $Conf{SmbShareUserName}, $Conf{SmbSharePasswd}, $Conf{SmbClientPath}, $Conf{SmbClientFullCmd}, $Conf{SmbClientIncrCmd} and $Conf{SmbClientRestoreCmd}.
BackupPC needs to know the smb share user name and password for a client machine that uses smb. The user name is specified in $Conf{SmbShareUserName}. There are four ways to tell BackupPC the smb share password:
As an environment variable BPC_SMB_PASSWD set before BackupPC starts. If you start BackupPC manually the BPC_SMB_PASSWD variable must be set manually first. For backward compatibility for v1.5.0 and prior, the environment variable PASSWD can be used if BPC_SMB_PASSWD is not set. Warning: on some systems it is possible to see environment variables of running processes.
Alternatively the BPC_SMB_PASSWD setting can be included in /etc/init.d/backuppc, in which case you must make sure this file is not world (other) readable.
As a configuration variable $Conf{SmbSharePasswd} in /etc/backuppc/config.pl. If you put the password here you must make sure this file is not world (other) readable.
As a configuration variable $Conf{SmbSharePasswd} in the per-PC configuration file (/etc/backuppc/pc/$host.pl or /var/lib/backuppc/pc/$host/config.pl in non-FHS versions of BackupPC). You will have to use this option if the smb share password is different for each host. If you put the password here you must make sure this file is not world (other) readable.
Placement and protection of the smb share password is a possible security risk, so please double-check the file and directory permissions. In a future version there might be support for encryption of this password, but a private key will still have to be stored in a protected place. Suggestions are welcome.
As an alternative to setting $Conf{XferMethod} to "smb" (using smbclient) for WinXX clients, you can use an smb network filesystem (eg: ksmbfs or similar) on your linux/unix server to mount the share, and then set $Conf{XferMethod} to "tar" (use tar on the network mounted file system).
Also, to make sure that file names with special characters are correctly transferred by smbclient you should make sure that the smb.conf file has (for samba 3.x):
[global]
unix charset = UTF8UTF8 is the default setting, so if the parameter is missing then it is ok. With this setting $Conf{ClientCharset} should be emtpy, since smbclient has already converted the file names to utf8.
The preferred setup for linux/unix clients is to set $Conf{XferMethod} to "rsync", "rsyncd" or "tar".
You can use either rsync, smb, or tar for linux/unix machines. Smb requires that the Samba server (smbd) be run to provide the shares. Since the smb protocol can't represent special files like symbolic links and fifos, tar and rsync are the better transport methods for linux/unix machines. (In fact, by default samba makes symbolic links look like the file or directory that they point to, so you could get an infinite loop if a symbolic link points to the current or parent directory. If you really need to use Samba shares for linux/unix backups you should turn off the "follow symlinks" samba config setting. See the smb.conf manual page.)
The requirements for each Xfer Method are:
You must have GNU tar on the client machine. Use "tar --version" or "gtar --version" to verify. The version should be at least 1.13.7, and 1.13.20 or greater is recommended. Tar is run on the client machine via rsh or ssh.
The relevant configuration settings are $Conf{TarClientPath}, $Conf{TarShareName}, $Conf{TarClientCmd}, $Conf{TarFullArgs}, $Conf{TarIncrArgs}, and $Conf{TarClientRestoreCmd}.
You should have at least rsync 2.6.3, and the latest version is recommended. Rsync is run on the remote client via rsh or ssh.
The relevant configuration settings are $Conf{RsyncClientPath}, $Conf{RsyncClientCmd}, $Conf{RsyncClientRestoreCmd}, $Conf{RsyncShareName}, $Conf{RsyncArgs}, and $Conf{RsyncRestoreArgs}.
You should have at least rsync 2.6.3, and the latest version is recommended. In this case the rsync daemon should be running on the client machine and BackupPC connects directly to it.
The relevant configuration settings are $Conf{RsyncdClientPort}, $Conf{RsyncdUserName}, $Conf{RsyncdPasswd}, $Conf{RsyncdAuthRequired}, $Conf{RsyncShareName}, $Conf{RsyncArgs}, $Conf{RsyncArgsExtra}, and $Conf{RsyncRestoreArgs}. $Conf{RsyncShareName} is the name of an rsync module (ie: the thing in square brackets in rsyncd's conf file -- see rsyncd.conf), not a file system path.
Be aware that rsyncd will remove the leading '/' from path names in symbolic links if you specify "use chroot = no" in the rsynd.conf file. See the rsyncd.conf manual page for more information.
You need to be running an ftp server on the client machine. The relevant configuration settings are $Conf{FtpShareName}, $Conf{FtpUserName}, $Conf{FtpPasswd}, $Conf{FtpBlockSize}, $Conf{FtpPort}, $Conf{FtpTimeout}, and $Conf{FtpFollowSymlinks}.
You need to set $Conf{ClientCharset} to the client's charset so that file names are correctly converted to utf8. Use "locale charmap" on the client to see its charset.
For linux/unix machines you should not backup "/proc". This directory contains a variety of files that look like regular files but they are special files that don't need to be backed up (eg: /proc/kcore is a regular file that contains physical memory). See $Conf{BackupFilesExclude}. It is safe to back up /dev since it contains mostly character-special and block-special files, which are correctly handed by BackupPC (eg: backing up /dev/hda5 just saves the block-special file information, not the contents of the disk).
Alternatively, rather than backup all the file systems as a single share ("/"), it is easier to restore a single file system if you backup each file system separately. To do this you should list each file system mount point in $Conf{TarShareName} or $Conf{RsyncShareName}, and add the --one-file-system option to $Conf{TarClientCmd} or $Conf{RsyncArgs}. In this case there is no need to exclude /proc explicitly since it looks like a different file system.
Next you should decide whether to run tar over ssh, rsh or nfs. Ssh is the preferred method. Rsh is not secure and therefore not recommended. Nfs will work, but you need to make sure that the BackupPC user (running on the server) has sufficient permissions to read all the files below the nfs mount.
Ssh allows BackupPC to run as a privileged user on the client (eg: root), since it needs sufficient permissions to read all the backup files. Ssh is setup so that BackupPC on the server (an otherwise low privileged user) can ssh as root on the client, without being prompted for a password. There are two common versions of ssh: v1 and v2. Here are some instructions for one way to setup ssh. (Check which version of SSH you have by typing "ssh" or "man ssh".)
In general this should be similar to Linux/Unix machines. In versions 10.4 and later, the native MacOSX tar works, and also supports resource forks. xtar is another option, and rsync works too (although the MacOSX-supplied rsync has an extension for extended attributes that is not compatible with standard rsync).
SSH is a secure way to run tar or rsync on a backup client to extract the data. SSH provides strong authentication and encryption of the network data.
Note that if you run rsyncd (rsync daemon), ssh is not used. In this case, rsyncd provides its own authentication, but there is no encryption of network data. If you want encryption of network data you can use ssh to create a tunnel, or use a program like stunnel.
Setup instructions for ssh can be found at http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/faq/ssh.html or on the Wiki.
If a client machine uses DHCP BackupPC needs some way to find the IP address given the host name. One alternative is to set dhcp to 1 in the hosts file, and BackupPC will search a pool of IP addresses looking for hosts. More efficiently, it is better to set dhcp = 0 and provide a mechanism for BackupPC to find the IP address given the host name.
For WinXX machines BackupPC uses the NetBios name server to determine the IP address given the host name. For unix machines you can run nmbd (the NetBios name server) from the Samba distribution so that the machine responds to a NetBios name request. See the manual page and Samba documentation for more information.
Alternatively, you can set $Conf{NmbLookupFindHostCmd} to any command that returns the IP address given the host name.
Please read the section "How BackupPC Finds Hosts" for more details.
The installation contains an init.d backuppc script that can be copied to /etc/init.d so that BackupPC can auto-start on boot. See init.d/README for further instructions.
BackupPC should be ready to start. If you installed the init.d script, then you should be able to run BackupPC with:
/etc/init.d/backuppc start(This script can also be invoked with "stop" to stop BackupPC and "reload" to tell BackupPC to reload config.pl and the hosts file.)
Otherwise, just run
/usr/share/backuppc/bin/BackupPC -das user backuppc. The -d option tells BackupPC to run as a daemon (ie: it does an additional fork).
Any immediate errors will be printed to stderr and BackupPC will quit. Otherwise, look in /var/lib/backuppc/log/LOG and verify that BackupPC reports it has started and all is ok.
You should verify that BackupPC is running by using BackupPC_serverMesg. This sends a message to BackupPC via the unix (or TCP) socket and prints the response. Like all BackupPC programs, BackupPC_serverMesg should be run as the BackupPC user (backuppc), so you should
su backuppcbefore running BackupPC_serverMesg. If the BackupPC user is configured with /bin/false as the shell, you can use the -s option to su to explicitly run a shell, eg:
su -s /bin/bash backuppcDepending upon your configuration you might also need the -l option.
You can request status information and start and stop backups using this interface. This socket interface is mainly provided for the CGI interface (and some of the BackupPC sub-programs use it too). But right now we just want to make sure BackupPC is happy. Each of these commands should produce some status output:
/usr/share/backuppc/bin/BackupPC_serverMesg status info
/usr/share/backuppc/bin/BackupPC_serverMesg status jobs
/usr/share/backuppc/bin/BackupPC_serverMesg status hostsThe output should be some hashes printed with Data::Dumper. If it looks cryptic and confusing, and doesn't look like an error message, then all is ok.
The jobs status should initially show just BackupPC_trashClean. The hosts status should produce a list of every host you have listed in /etc/backuppc/hosts as part of a big cryptic output line.
You can also request that all hosts be queued:
/usr/share/backuppc/bin/BackupPC_serverMesg backup allAt this point you should make sure the CGI interface works since it will be much easier to see what is going on. That's our next subject.
The script BackupPC_sendEmail sends status and error emails to the administrator and users. It is usually run each night by BackupPC_nightly.
To verify that it can run sendmail and deliver email correctly you should ask it to send a test email to you:
su backuppc
/usr/share/backuppc/bin/BackupPC_sendEmail -u MYNAME@MYDOMAIN.COMBackupPC_sendEmail also takes a -c option that checks if BackupPC is running, and it sends an email to $Conf{EMailAdminUserName} if it is not. That can be used as a keep-alive check by adding
/usr/share/backuppc/bin/BackupPC_sendEmail -cto backuppc's cron.
The -t option to BackupPC_sendEmail causes it to print the email message instead of invoking sendmail to deliver the message.
The CGI interface script, BackupPC_Admin, is a powerful and flexible way to see and control what BackupPC is doing. It is written for an Apache server. If you don't have Apache, see http://www.apache.org.
There are two options for setting up the CGI interface: standard mode and using mod_perl. Mod_perl provides much higher performance (around 15x) and is the best choice if your Apache was built with mod_perl support. To see if your apache was built with mod_perl run this command:
httpd -l | egrep mod_perlIf this prints mod_perl.c then your Apache supports mod_perl.
Note: on some distributions (like Debian) the command is not ``httpd'', but ``apache'' or ``apache2''. Those distributions will generally also use ``apache'' for the Apache user account and configuration files.
Using mod_perl with BackupPC_Admin requires a dedicated Apache to be run as the BackupPC user (backuppc). This is because BackupPC_Admin needs permission to access various files in BackupPC's data directories. In contrast, the standard installation (without mod_perl) solves this problem by having BackupPC_Admin installed as setuid to the BackupPC user, so that BackupPC_Admin runs as the BackupPC user.
Here are some specifics for each setup:
The CGI interface should have been installed by the configure.pl script in /usr/share/backuppc/cgi-bin/BackupPC_Admin. BackupPC_Admin should have been installed as setuid to the BackupPC user (backuppc), in addition to user and group execute permission.
You should be very careful about permissions on BackupPC_Admin and the directory /usr/share/backuppc/cgi-bin: it is important that normal users cannot directly execute or change BackupPC_Admin, otherwise they can access backup files for any PC. You might need to change the group ownership of BackupPC_Admin to a group that Apache belongs to so that Apache can execute it (don't add "other" execute permission!). The permissions should look like this:
ls -l /usr/share/backuppc/cgi-bin/BackupPC_Admin
-swxr-x--- 1 backuppc web 82406 Jun 17 22:58 /usr/share/backuppc/cgi-bin/BackupPC_AdminThe setuid script won't work unless perl on your machine was installed with setuid emulation. This is likely the problem if you get an error saying such as "Wrong user: my userid is 25, instead of 150", meaning the script is running as the httpd user, not the BackupPC user. This is because setuid scripts are disabled by the kernel in most flavors of unix and linux.
To see if your perl has setuid emulation, see if there is a program called sperl5.8.0 (or sperl5.8.2 etc, based on your perl version) in the place where perl is installed. If you can't find this program, then you have two options: rebuild and reinstall perl with the setuid emulation turned on (answer "y" to the question "Do you want to do setuid/setgid emulation?" when you run perl's configure script), or switch to the mod_perl alternative for the CGI script (which doesn't need setuid to work).
The advantage of the mod_perl setup is that no setuid script is needed, and there is a huge performance advantage. Not only does all the perl code need to be parsed just once, the config.pl and hosts files, plus the connection to the BackupPC server are cached between requests. The typical speedup is around 15 times.
To use mod_perl you need to run Apache as user backuppc. If you need to run multiple Apache's for different services then you need to create multiple top-level Apache directories, each with their own config file. You can make copies of /etc/init.d/httpd and use the -d option to httpd to point each http to a different top-level directory. Or you can use the -f option to explicitly point to the config file. Multiple Apache's will run on different Ports (eg: 80 is standard, 8080 is a typical alternative port accessed via http://yourhost.com:8080).
Inside BackupPC's Apache http.conf file you should check the settings for ServerRoot, DocumentRoot, User, Group, and Port. See http://httpd.apache.org/docs/server-wide.html for more details.
For mod_perl, BackupPC_Admin should not have setuid permission, so you should turn it off:
chmod u-s /usr/share/backuppc/cgi-bin/BackupPC_AdminTo tell Apache to use mod_perl to execute BackupPC_Admin, add this to Apache's 1.x httpd.conf file:
<IfModule mod_perl.c>
PerlModule Apache::Registry
PerlTaintCheck On
<Location /cgi-bin/BackupPC/BackupPC_Admin> # <--- change path as needed
SetHandler perl-script
PerlHandler Apache::Registry
Options ExecCGI
PerlSendHeader On
</Location>
</IfModule>Apache 2.0.44 with Perl 5.8.0 on RedHat 7.1, Don Silvia reports that this works (with tweaks from Michael Tuzi):
LoadModule perl_module modules/mod_perl.so
PerlModule Apache2
<Directory /path/to/cgi/>
SetHandler perl-script
PerlResponseHandler ModPerl::Registry
PerlOptions +ParseHeaders
Options +ExecCGI
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
Allow from 192.168.0
AuthName "Backup Admin"
AuthType Basic
AuthUserFile /path/to/user_file
Require valid-user
</Directory>There are other optimizations and options with mod_perl. For example, you can tell mod_perl to preload various perl modules, which saves memory compared to loading separate copies in every Apache process after they are forked. See Stas's definitive mod_perl guide at http://perl.apache.org/guide.
BackupPC_Admin requires that users are authenticated by Apache. Specifically, it expects that Apache sets the REMOTE_USER environment variable when it runs. There are several ways to do this. One way is to create a .htaccess file in the cgi-bin directory that looks like:
AuthGroupFile /etc/httpd/conf/group # <--- change path as needed
AuthUserFile /etc/http/conf/passwd # <--- change path as needed
AuthType basic
AuthName "access"
require valid-userYou will also need "AllowOverride Indexes AuthConfig" in the Apache httpd.conf file to enable the .htaccess file. Alternatively, everything can go in the Apache httpd.conf file inside a Location directive. The list of users and password file above can be extracted from the NIS passwd file.
One alternative is to use LDAP. In Apache's http.conf add these lines:
LoadModule auth_ldap_module modules/auth_ldap.so
AddModule auth_ldap.c
# cgi-bin - auth via LDAP (for BackupPC)
<Location /cgi-binBackupPC/BackupPC_Admin> # <--- change path as needed
AuthType Basic
AuthName "BackupPC login"
# replace MYDOMAIN, PORT, ORG and CO as needed
AuthLDAPURL ldap://ldap.MYDOMAIN.com:PORT/o=ORG,c=CO?uid?sub?(objectClass=*)
require valid-user
</Location>If you want to disable the user authentication you can set $Conf{CgiAdminUsers} to '*', which allows any user to have full access to all hosts and backups. In this case the REMOTE_USER environment variable does not have to be set by Apache.
Alternatively, you can force a particular user name by getting Apache to set REMOTE_USER, eg, to hardcode the user to www you could add this to Apache's httpd.conf:
<Location /cgi-bin/BackupPC/BackupPC_Admin> # <--- change path as needed
Setenv REMOTE_USER www
</Location>Finally, you should also edit the config.pl file and adjust, as necessary, the CGI-specific settings. They're near the end of the config file. In particular, you should specify which users or groups have administrator (privileged) access: see the config settings $Conf{CgiAdminUserGroup} and $Conf{CgiAdminUsers}. Also, the configure.pl script placed various images into $Conf{CgiImageDir} that BackupPC_Admin needs to serve up. You should make sure that $Conf{CgiImageDirURL} is the correct URL for the image directory.
See the section "Fixing installation problems" for suggestions on debugging the Apache authentication setup.
Starting with v2.0.0 the way hosts are discovered has changed. In most cases you should specify 0 for the DHCP flag in the conf/hosts file, even if the host has a dynamically assigned IP address.
BackupPC (starting with v2.0.0) looks up hosts with DHCP = 0 in this manner:
First DNS is used to lookup the IP address given the client's name using perl's gethostbyname() function. This should succeed for machines that have fixed IP addresses that are known via DNS. You can manually see whether a given host have a DNS entry according to perl's gethostbyname function with this command:
perl -e 'print(gethostbyname("myhost") ? "ok\n" : "not found\n");'If gethostbyname() fails, BackupPC then attempts a NetBios multicast to find the host. Provided your client machine is configured properly, it should respond to this NetBios multicast request. Specifically, BackupPC runs a command of this form:
nmblookup myhostIf this fails you will see output like:
querying myhost on 10.10.255.255
name_query failed to find name myhostIf it is successful you will see output like:
querying myhost on 10.10.255.255
10.10.1.73 myhost<00>Depending on your netmask you might need to specify the -B option to nmblookup. For example:
nmblookup -B 10.10.1.255 myhostIf necessary, experiment with the nmblookup command which will return the IP address of the client given its name. Then update $Conf{NmbLookupFindHostCmd} with any necessary options to nmblookup.
For hosts that have the DHCP flag set to 1, these machines are discovered as follows:
A DHCP address pool ($Conf{DHCPAddressRanges}) needs to be specified. BackupPC will check the NetBIOS name of each machine in the range using a command of the form:
nmblookup -A W.X.Y.Zwhere W.X.Y.Z is each candidate address from $Conf{DHCPAddressRanges}. Any host that has a valid NetBIOS name returned by this command (ie: matching an entry in the hosts file) will be backed up. You can modify the specific nmblookup command if necessary via $Conf{NmbLookupCmd}.
You only need to use this DHCP feature if your client machine doesn't respond to the NetBios multicast request:
nmblookup myHostbut does respond to a request directed to its IP address:
nmblookup -A W.X.Y.ZIf there is a machine that no longer needs to be backed up (eg: a retired machine) you have two choices. First, you can keep the backups accessible and browsable, but disable all new backups. Alternatively, you can completely remove the client and all its backups.
To disable backups for a client $Conf{BackupsDisable} can be set to two different values in that client's per-PC config.pl file:
Don't do any regular backups on this machine. Manually requested backups (via the CGI interface) will still occur.
Don't do any backups on this machine. Manually requested backups (via the CGI interface) will be ignored.
This will still allow the client's old backups to be browsable and restorable.
To completely remove a client and all its backups, you should remove its entry in the conf/hosts file, and then delete the /var/lib/backuppc/pc/$host directory. Whenever you change the hosts file, you should send BackupPC a HUP (-1) signal so that it re-reads the hosts file. If you don't do this, BackupPC will automatically re-read the hosts file at the next regular wakeup.
Note that when you remove a client's backups you won't initially recover much disk space. That's because the client's files are still in the pool. Overnight, when BackupPC_nightly next runs, all the unused pool files will be deleted and this will recover the disk space used by the client's backups.
If the pool disk requirements grow you might need to copy the entire data directory to a new (bigger) file system. Hopefully you are lucky enough to avoid this by having the data directory on a RAID file system or LVM that allows the capacity to be grown in place by adding disks.
The backup data directories contain large numbers of hardlinks. If you try to copy the pool the target directory will occupy a lot more space if the hardlinks aren't re-established.
The best way to copy a pool file system, if possible, is by copying the raw device at the block level (eg: using dd). Application level programs that understand hardlinks include the GNU cp program with the -a option and rsync -H. However, the large number of hardlinks in the pool will make the memory usage large and the copy very slow. Don't forget to stop BackupPC while the copy runs.
Starting in 3.0.0 a new script bin/BackupPC_tarPCCopy can be used to assist the copy process. Given one or more pc paths (eg: TOPDIR/pc/HOST or TOPDIR/pc/HOST/nnn), BackupPC_tarPCCopy creates a tar archive with all the hardlinks pointing to ../cpool/.... Any files not hardlinked (eg: backups, LOG etc) are included verbatim.
You will need to specify the -P option to tar when you extract the archive generated by BackupPC_tarPCCopy since the hardlink targets are outside of the directory being extracted.
To copy a complete store (ie: /var/lib/backuppc) using BackupPC_tarPCCopy you should:
stop BackupPC so that the store is static.
copy the cpool, conf and log directory trees using any technique (like cp, rsync or tar) without the need to preserve hardlinks.
copy the pc directory using BackupPC_tarPCCopy:
su backuppc
cd NEW_TOPDIR
mkdir pc
cd pc
/usr/share/backuppc/bin/BackupPC_tarPCCopy /var/lib/backuppc/pc | tar xvPf -Please see the Wiki at http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net for debugging suggestions. If you find a solution to your problem that could help other users please add it to the Wiki!
BackupPC supports several different methods for restoring files. The most convenient restore options are provided via the CGI interface. Alternatively, backup files can be restored using manual commands.
By selecting a host in the CGI interface, a list of all the backups for that machine will be displayed. By selecting the backup number you can navigate the shares and directory tree for that backup.
BackupPC's CGI interface automatically fills incremental backups with the corresponding full backup, which means each backup has a filled appearance. Therefore, there is no need to do multiple restores from the incremental and full backups: BackupPC does all the hard work for you. You simply select the files and directories you want from the correct backup vintage in one step.
You can download a single backup file at any time simply by selecting it. Your browser should prompt you with the file name and ask you whether to open the file or save it to disk.
Alternatively, you can select one or more files or directories in the currently selected directory and select "Restore selected files". (If you need to restore selected files and directories from several different parent directories you will need to do that in multiple steps.)
If you select all the files in a directory, BackupPC will replace the list of files with the parent directory. You will be presented with a screen that has three options:
With this option the selected files and directories are restored directly back onto the host, by default in their original location. Any old files with the same name will be overwritten, so use caution. You can optionally change the target host name, target share name, and target path prefix for the restore, allowing you to restore the files to a different location.
Once you select "Start Restore" you will be prompted one last time with a summary of the exact source and target files and directories before you commit. When you give the final go ahead the restore operation will be queued like a normal backup job, meaning that it will be deferred if there is a backup currently running for that host. When the restore job is run, smbclient, tar, rsync or rsyncd is used (depending upon $Conf{XferMethod}) to actually restore the files. Sorry, there is currently no option to cancel a restore that has been started. Currently ftp restores are not fully implemented.
A record of the restore request, including the result and list of files and directories, is kept. It can be browsed from the host's home page. $Conf{RestoreInfoKeepCnt} specifies how many old restore status files to keep.
Note that for direct restore to work, the $Conf{XferMethod} must be able to write to the client. For example, that means an SMB share for smbclient needs to be writable, and the rsyncd module needs "read only" set to "false". This creates additional security risks. If you only create read-only SMB shares (which is a good idea), then the direct restore will fail. You can disable the direct restore option by setting $Conf{SmbClientRestoreCmd}, $Conf{TarClientRestoreCmd} and $Conf{RsyncRestoreArgs} to undef.
With this option a zip file containing the selected files and directories is downloaded. The zip file can then be unpacked or individual files extracted as necessary on the host machine. The compression level can be specified. A value of 0 turns off compression.
When you select "Download Zip File" you should be prompted where to save the restore.zip file.
BackupPC does not consider downloading a zip file as an actual restore operation, so the details are not saved for later browsing as in the first case. However, a mention that a zip file was downloaded by a particular user, and a list of the files, does appear in BackupPC's log file.
This is identical to the previous option, except a tar file is downloaded rather than a zip file (and there is currently no compression option).
Apart from the CGI interface, BackupPC allows you to restore files and directories from the command line. The following programs can be used:
For each file name argument it inflates (uncompresses) the file and writes it to stdout. To use BackupPC_zcat you could give it the full file name, eg:
/usr/share/backuppc/bin/BackupPC_zcat /var/lib/backuppc/pc/host/5/fc/fcraig/fexample.txt > example.txtIt's your responsibility to make sure the file is really compressed: BackupPC_zcat doesn't check which backup the requested file is from. BackupPC_zcat returns a non-zero status if it fails to uncompress a file.
BackupPC_tarCreate creates a tar file for any files or directories in a particular backup. Merging of incrementals is done automatically, so you don't need to worry about whether certain files appear in the incremental or full backup.
The usage is:
BackupPC_tarCreate [options] files/directories...
Required options:
-h host host from which the tar archive is created
-n dumpNum dump number from which the tar archive is created
A negative number means relative to the end (eg -1
means the most recent dump, -2 2nd most recent etc).
-s shareName share name from which the tar archive is created
Other options:
-t print summary totals
-r pathRemove path prefix that will be replaced with pathAdd
-p pathAdd new path prefix
-b BLOCKS BLOCKS x 512 bytes per record (default 20; same as tar)
-w writeBufSz write buffer size (default 1048576 = 1MB)
-e charset charset for encoding file names (default: value of
$Conf{ClientCharset} when backup was done)
-l just print a file listing; don't generate an archive
-L just print a detailed file listing; don't generate an archiveThe command-line files and directories are relative to the specified shareName. The tar file is written to stdout.
The -h, -n and -s options specify which dump is used to generate the tar archive. The -r and -p options can be used to relocate the paths in the tar archive so extracted files can be placed in a location different from their original location.
BackupPC_zipCreate creates a zip file for any files or directories in a particular backup. Merging of incrementals is done automatically, so you don't need to worry about whether certain files appear in the incremental or full backup.
The usage is:
BackupPC_zipCreate [options] files/directories...
Required options:
-h host host from which the zip archive is created
-n dumpNum dump number from which the tar archive is created
A negative number means relative to the end (eg -1
means the most recent dump, -2 2nd most recent etc).
-s shareName share name from which the zip archive is created
Other options:
-t print summary totals
-r pathRemove path prefix that will be replaced with pathAdd
-p pathAdd new path prefix
-c level compression level (default is 0, no compression)
-e charset charset for encoding file names (default: utf8)The command-line files and directories are relative to the specified shareName. The zip file is written to stdout. The -h, -n and -s options specify which dump is used to generate the zip archive. The -r and -p options can be used to relocate the paths in the zip archive so extracted files can be placed in a location different from their original location.
Each of these programs reside in /usr/share/backuppc/bin.
BackupPC supports archiving to removable media. For users that require offsite backups, BackupPC can create archives that stream to tape devices, or create files of specified sizes to fit onto cd or dvd media.
Each archive type is specified by a BackupPC host with its XferMethod set to 'archive'. This allows for multiple configurations at sites where there might be a combination of tape and cd/dvd backups being made.
BackupPC provides a menu that allows one or more hosts to be archived. The most recent backup of each host is archived using BackupPC_tarCreate, and the output is optionally compressed and split into fixed-sized files (eg: 650MB).
The archive for each host is done by default using /usr/share/backuppc/bin/BackupPC_archiveHost. This script can be copied and customized as needed.
To create an Archive Host, add it to the hosts file just as any other host and call it a name that best describes the type of archive, e.g. ArchiveDLT
To tell BackupPC that the Host is for Archives, create a config.pl file in the Archive Hosts's pc directory, adding the following line:
$Conf{XferMethod} = 'archive';
To further customise the archive's parameters you can adding the changed parameters in the host's config.pl file. The parameters are explained in the config.pl file. Parameters may be fixed or the user can be allowed to change them (eg: output device).
The per-host archive command is $Conf{ArchiveClientCmd}. By default this invokes
/usr/share/backuppc/bin/BackupPC_archiveHostwhich you can copy and customize as necessary.
In the web interface, click on the Archive Host you wish to use. You will see a list of pre