Tag Archives: automated

Red Had Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6. I missed the ease of configuration and all the free tools that people smarter than me have created.

Systems that can take advantage of Rsnapshot

I would like to do a fast post on rsnapshot. I have seen ssh and rsnapshot scheduled in cron to automate backups of OSX to a Linux server. Since we didn’t want the wireless to slow down we only used the physical MAC address of the MAC. What makes rsnapshot so great is that it will wok on so many systems that are out there (Ubuntu, Debian GNU/Linux, Red Hat Linux, Fedora Linux, SuSE Linux, Gentoo Linux, Slackware Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Solaris, Mac OS X, and even IRIX) .

For now I’m using it for personal automated backups to my external hard drive. There are plenty of other advanced options and examples on the Internet. I just wanted to get out a fast an easy example.

1. First – find and install rsnapshot. for Red Hat this was
   $ sudo yum install rsnapshot
(rsynch is a dependancy that should already be installed).
2. After install if you do not have this file /etc/rsnapshot.conf. Use the command:
   $ sudo cp /etc/rsnapshot.conf.default /etc/rsnapshot.conf
3. Edit rsnapshot.conf – The defaults I changed from the default configuration file are below. These options allow me to back up everything in /etc/ and /home/. Backups kept will be twice a day, 7 days a week, 4 weeks, 12 months and 5 years (change this as you see fit).  Most important is that switch to make sure that the mount point will not be created and wrote to locally if the disk is not attached.
   1. WHERE TO PLACE BACKUPS
      # All snapshots will be stored under this root directory.
#
snapshot_root   /media/myexternal/rsnapshot/
   2. DO NOT CREATE IF DISK IS NOT CREATED
# If no_create_root is enabled, rsnapshot will not automatically create the
# snapshot_root directory. This is particularly useful if you are backing
# up to removable media, such as a FireWire or USB drive.
#
no_create_root 1
   3. INTERVALS (make sure this is tabbed – do NOT use spaces)
#########################################
#           BACKUP INTERVALS            #
# Must be unique and in ascending order #
# i.e. hourly, daily, weekly, etc.      #
#########################################
interval        hourly  12
interval        daily   7
interval        weekly  4
interval        monthly 12
interval        yearly  5

4. Time to configure cron. Most people will tell you to create your jobs using $ crontab e
I prefer to use the root crontab using $ sudo vim /etc/crontab shown below:

0 */12 * * * root /usr/bin/rsnapshot hourly # Every 12 hours
30 23 * * * toot /usr/bin/rsnapshot daily   # Daily at 11:30PM
20 2 * * 0 root /usr/bin/rsnapshot weekly   # Sunday at 2:20AM
10 5 1 * * root /usr/bin/rsnapshot monthly  # First day of the month at 5:10AM
01 8 1 1 * root /usr/bin/rsnapshot yearly   # January 1st at 8:01AM
5. Test It – Following these steps you should have the basic setup needed to run rsnapshot on your personal computer to an external hard drive or usb. Just one last thing to do. Make sure that your hard drive is plugged in and  run:
   $ sudo rsnapshot -V hourly
   rsnapshot should give you plenty of verbose information as it creates your first hourly backup inside the location you specified. If there is a issue with the lock file, remove the lock file and try again.

Still stuck?

There are many other helpful documents out there  start with the rsnapshot how to:
http://www.rsnapshot.org/howto/1.2/rsnapshot-HOWTO.en.html#installation

If you want to learn how to do remote backup and use OSX? try this article:
http://blog.philippmetzler.com/?p=138

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