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Mon, 08 Jun 2009

/Admin/backups/backuppc: Backuppc Server

I have chosen backuppc[1] as my backup server software. It is powerful, flexible, has a web-based GUI, and yes, it does take a little bit of study to get it working. And documentation seems to be missing our favorite section: the "Quick Start". I will try to provide enough of a tutorial for a "Quick Start" here. Note that a more verbose tutorial exists here www.debianhelp.co.uk/backuppc.htm.

First, when you install backuppc, make sure that you also install libfile-rsyncp-perl. On my Debian box, this lib is "suggested" so it does not get installed automatically. You probably need to note your GUI login id (backuppc?) and password generated during the install. And another item that may also be Debian-specific is that it installs by default already setup to backup your localhost /etc directory.

Once installed, if you are sitting at the machine to which backuppc has been installed, point your web browser to localhost/backuppc/ then enter the userid and password noted above at the prompt. Choose "localhost" from the host drop down menu, then click the "Start Full Backup". A couple minutes later your /etc should be backed up. Then click the "Browse Backups" link on the upper left. That should give a general idea of useage.

You can modify your backuppc password by running the following command: "htpasswd /etc/backuppc/htpasswd backuppc"

To setup backup for another machine, you need to go to /etc/backuppc/. The main config file is config.pl, which I am trying really hard not to change so as to preserve default behavior through future upgrades. That may not work for you if you have a lot of machines to backup and want to do a lot of customization.

To add another backup machine, first create a name.pl file, where "name" is the name of the machine in your /etc/hosts file. Sample content to use rsyncd to backup /etc/ and /home on the remote machine might be the following:

$Conf{XferMethod} = 'rsyncd';
$Conf{RsyncdUserName} = 'userid';
$Conf{RsyncdPasswd} = 'password';
$Conf{RsyncShareName} = ['etc', 'home'];

Note that you might want to add something like

$Conf{BackupFilesExclude} = ['/sys', '/proc', '/dev', '/cdrom', '/media', '/floppy', '/mnt', '/var/lib/backuppc', '/lost+found'];

to the above config if you are backing up the root partition of an entire Linux system, for instance.

Then edit /etc/backuppc/hosts to contain the following two lines:

localhost 0 backuppc
nameOfMachineToBeBackedUp 0 backuppc

where "nameOfMachineToBeBackedUp" is the same as "name" from name.pl.

[1] http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/

posted at: 03:48 | path: /Admin/backups/backuppc | permanent link to this entry

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Mon, 08 Jun 2009