NAME
vbackup - A modular backup program
SYNOPSIS
vbackup [OPTIONS] <backup configuration directory>
or vbackup [OPTIONS] --list
or vbackup [OPTIONS] --check <backup configuration directory>
or vbackup --help [<module>]
or vbackup --version
DESCRIPTION
vbackup is a program that performs system backups. The backup strategy
is specified with a set of minimal configuration files that exist in
directories under /etc/vbackup. See the quickstart section for quick
first-time setup.
OPTIONS
--check <backup configuration directory>
Check configuration files for a specific backup strategy. Each
module checks its own configuration file.
-d <level>
Set the message level to <level> (default level is 8): 1: Fatal,
2: Error, 3: Warning, 4: Note, 5-7: Information (5: Rare
messages, 6: Usefull message, 7: Not so usefull), 10-14: Debug
messages that don’t flood, 15-19: Debug messages that flood
--help [<module>]
Show some help. If a module is passed as argument the it will
display some help about that module. This is where the module
configuration parameters are shown.
--list List all available modules, their version and some brief
description.
--version
Guess what...
QUICKSTART
Use the vbackup-wizard(8) for quickstarting. Most probably that’s what
you will do the first time.
CONFIGURATION
The backup strategy is specified with a set of minimal configuration
files that exist in directories under /etc/vbackup. Each directory is
named backup.XXXXX where XXXXX is the name of the backup strategy.
For example, a simplistic backup strategy may have two directories
named backup.0 and backup.5. Each of them will include configuration
files that describe level 0 and leve 5 system backups.
It is adviced to have a directory named rc.d under /etc/vbackup that
will hold all configuration files. After that, individual backup.XXXXX
directories will only contain links to those files. It is absolutely
sure that some files will be the same among different backup strategies
and trying to keep them synchronized will be an uneeded pain.
Each configuration file must contain a vbackup.conf file that specifies
some global configuration options (like a destination directory). Next,
it must contain one or more module configuration files. The available
modules can be seen using the --list parameter. Each configuration file
is in the form something.modulename. It is suggested that something is
in the form of NN-string where NN is a two (or more) digit number and
string is a descriptive string. For example, a good name is
"00-myserver.nfsmount". This clearly shows that a path in myserver will
be mounted using nfs and it will help you when 2 years later you’ll
attempt to edit those files. The number prefix helps in determining the
sorting order. All configuration files are examined in a sorted order.
The complete documentation is in the README files.
BACKUP
After having created at least one backup.XXXXX directory in
/etc/vbackup, you can perform that backup by running "vbackup XXXXX".
This will first source the vbackup.conf and it will then check for
existing configuration files. For each one that is found, it will
determine the appropriate backup module and run it.
MODULES
dpkg Backup the debian package list. Small space requirement and very
usefull for restoring a debian system.
exist Check whether a file or directory exists. This can be used to
determine whether a filesystem is actually mounted or not. It is
strongly advised to use this when youre not using mount or
nfsmount!
ftar Use tar to backup a filesystem but use find to locate the files
to backup. This is simillar to the tar method but is not that
good for incremental backups. If you restore a system that was
incrementally backed up using this method it will have all files
that were deleted between intermediate backups too. The
advantage of this method is that you can use regular expression
to filter files that will be backed up.
mbr Backup MBRs from all disks and their Partition Tables. It will
also backup MD and LVM information if any of those is detected.
Extremely usefull with very low space requirements.
mount Mount a local filesystem, in case you have an unmounted
filesystem to perform backups (for example a spare or external
disk).
mysql Backup some or all MySQL databases.
nfsmount
Mount a remote filesystem using NFS.
off Don’t do anything at all. Very usefull for disabling
configuration files. For example, if you rename 50-main.pgsql to
50-main.pgsql.off it will remain in the configuration directory
by will be disabled.
pgsql Backup some or all PostgreSQL databases.
tar Perform incremental backups using the listed-incremental format
of GNU tar. Use the --noplugin parameter when editing tar
configuration files (!!!).
umount Umount a filesystem that was previously mounted. This can be
used for local and remote mounts. The configuration of this
module is compatible with the configuration of mount and
nfsmount modules. This means that you can just create a link to
the coresponding mount configuration file to have it unount the
filesystem. (For example, link 00-remote.nfsmount to
99-remount.umount)
xfsdump
Perform incremental backups using xfsdump. This is by far the
very best way to backup an XFS filesystem (as a whole). It works
extremely well, it is very reliable and it is able to do live
backups. It is also very easy to restore all or part of the
backed-up data using the interactive xfsrestore utility
(xfsrestore -i).
EXTENDING
You can extend vbackup by writting very simple scripts that will be
combined with other scripts. Read the README.dev file for more
information and have a look at other modules.
AUTHOR - COPYRIGHT
vbackup is written and maintained by Stefanos Harhalakis. Copyright
(c) 2006-2009 Harhalakis Stefanos
CONTACT
For bugs, requests, ideas, comments or anything else (except spam)
contact <v13@v13.gr>
LICENSE
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your
option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
General Public License for more details.
If GPLv3 doesn’t fit your needs (BSD?) feel free to contact me and I
may release it with another license too.
SEE ALSO
vbackup-wizard(8)
Sep 24, 2009