rsbackup(1) General Commands Manual rsbackup(1)

rsbackup - rsync-based backup utility

rsbackup [OPTIONS] [--] [SELECTOR...]
rsbackup --retire [OPTIONS] [--] [SELECTOR...]
rsbackup --retire-device [OPTIONS] [--] DEVICE...

rsbackup backs up files from one or more (remote) destinations to a single backup storage directory, preserving their contents, layout, ownership, permissions, timestamps and hardlink structure.

Incremental backups are achieved by hard-linking identical files within successive backups of the same files.

See rsbackup(5) for details of the configuration file.

At least one of these options must be specified. When multiple actions are specified, they are executed in the order shown below.

Make a backup of the selected volumes. At most one backup of a given volume will be made per day.
--retire-device
Retire the named devices. Retiring a device only means deleting the records of it. Files on the device itself are not touched.
If the device is still listed in the configuration file then you will be asked whether you really want to retire it; you can suppress this check with the --force option.
Retire the named hosts and volumes. Retiring a volume means deleting any available backups for the volume and the records of them. Records corresponding to backups on unavailable devices are not removed.
If you just want to remove backup records for retired volumes but want to keep the backups, also use the --forget-only option (see below).
Since this command deletes backups, you will be prompted to confirm it. You can suppress this check with the --force option.
With --retire, suppresses deletion of backups, and instead just drops database records for the hosts and volumes affected.
Prune old backups of selected volumes. See rsbackup(5) for details how how pruning is controlled.
Prune incomplete backups of selected volumes. Any backups that failed before completion will be removed.
Write an HTML report to PATH. The report covers all volumes, not just selected ones. PATH can be - to write to standard output.
Write a plain text report to PATH. The report covers all volumes, not just selected ones. PATH can be - to write to standard output.
Email a report to ADDRESS. The contents is equivalent to the output of --text and --html.
List unexpected files on backup devices to standard output. Must not be combined with any other action option.
Note that this option does not verify that the backups are good. It just detects unexpected files on currently-mounted backup devices.
Prints out the path to the latest complete backup for each selected volume.
Writes the parsed configuration file to standard output. Must not be combined with any other action option.
With --verbose, the configuration file is annotated with descriptive comments.

The path to the configuration file. The default is /etc/rsbackup/config.
Specify the destination directory to back up to. Using this option (possibly more than once) is equivalent to removing the store directives from the configuration file and replacing them with the paths give in --store options.
This option implicitly enables the --warn-store option.
Equivalent to --store except that the store does not have to be a mount point.
Enable verbose mode. Various messages will be displayed to report progress and the rsync --quiet option is suppressed.
Enable dry-run mode. Commands will be displayed but nothing will actually be done.
Suppress checks made when retiring devices and volumes, and overrides backup policies.
For the --check-unexpected option, terminate filenames with a null, rather than newline.
Waits rather than giving up if another copy of rsbackup is running.
Override the path to the backup database.
Display a usage message.
Display the version number.

Controls which logfiles for a given volume/device pair to include in the report. The possible values of VERBOSITY are:
Includes all nonempty logfiles, even if the backup succeeded.
Includes all error logfiles.
Includes only the most recent error logfile.
Includes only the latest logfile, even if the backup succeeded.
Includes only the most recent logfile but only if that attempt failed. This is the default.

Display warnings for unknown devices, hosts and volumes. (Warnings will always be included in the report, this refers to runtime error output.)
Display warnings for unsuitable store directories and unavailable devices.
Display warnings for unreachable hosts.
Suppress warnings for rsync "partial transfer" diagnostics (which are on by default).
Enable all --warn- options.
Suppress display of errors from rsync.

The list of selectors on the command line determines what subset of the known volumes are backed up, pruned or retired. The following selectors are possible:

Select all volumes for the host.
Select the volume.
-HOST
Deselect all volumes for the host.
-HOST:VOLUME
Deselect the volume.
*
Select all volumes.

If no hosts or volumes are specified on the command line then all volumes are selected for backing up or pruning. For retiring, you must explicitly select hosts or volumes to retire and only positive selections are possible.

To add a new host create a host entry for it in the configuration file.

To back up the local host, specify hostname localhost. Otherwise you can usually omit hostname.

You may want to set host-wide values for prune-parameter prune-age, max-age and prune-parameter min-backups.

A host with no volumes has no effect.

To add a new volume create a volume entry for it in the relevant host section of the configuration file.

Add exclude options to skip files you don't want to back up. This might include temporary files and the contents of "trash" directories.

If the volume contains mount points, and you want to back up the contents of the subsiduary filesystems, then be sure to include the traverse option.

You may want to set per-volume values for prune-parameter prune-age, max-age and prune-parameter min-backups.

To add a new device:

1.
Format and mount it.
2.
chown it to root.
3.
chmod it to mode 0700.
4.
Create a device-id file containing its name in its top-level directory.
5.
Add a device entry for it in the configuration file,
6.
If you do not use store-pattern, add a store entry in the configuration file mentioning its usual mount point.

To backup up all available volumes to all available devices:


rsbackup --backup

You will probably want to automate this. To only back up a limited set of volumes specify selection arguments on the command line.

To prune old backups:


rsbackup --prune --prune-incomplete

You will probably want to automate this.

An "incomplete backup" occurs when a backup of a volume fails or is interrupted before completion. They are not immediately deleted because rsync may be able to use the files already transferred to save effort on subsequent backups on the same day, or (if there are no complete backups to use for this purpose) later days.

Retiring a host means removing all backups for it. The suggested approach is to remove configuration for it and then use rsbackup --retire HOST to remove its backups too. You can do this the other way around but you will be prompted to check you really meant to remove backups for a host still listed in the configuration file.

If any of the backups for the host are on a retired device you should retire that device first.

Retiring a volume means removing all backups for it. It is almost the same as retiring a whole host but the command is rsbackup --retire HOST:VOLUME.

You can retire multiple hosts and volumes in a single command.

Retiring a device just means removing the records for it. Use rsbackup --retire-device DEVICE to do this. The contents of the device are not modified; if you want that you must do it manually.

You can retire multiple devices in a single command.

Restore costs extra l-)

The backup has the same layout, permissions etc as the original system, so it's perfectly possible to simply copy files from a backup directory to their proper location.

Be careful to get file ownership right. The backup is stored with the same numeric user and group ID as the original system used.

Until a backup is completed, or while one is being pruned, a corresponding .incomplete file will exist. Check for such a file before restoring any given backup.

Supposing that host chymax has a volume called users in which user home directories are backed up, and user rjk wants their entire home directory to be restored, an example restore command might be:


rsync -aSHAXz --numeric-ids /store/chymax/users/2010-04-01/rjk/. chymax:~rjk/.

You could add the --delete option if you wanted to restore to exactly the status quo ante, or at the opposite extreme --existing if you only wanted to restore files that had been deleted.

You might prefer to rsync back into a staging area and then pick files out manually.

You could tar up a backup directory (or a subset of it) and then untar it on the target. Remember to use the --numeric-owner option to tar.

A store may be in the following states:

The store can be used for a backup.
The store cannot be used for a backup. Normally this does not generate an error but --warn-store can be used to report warnings for all unavailable stores, and if no store is available then the problems with the unavailable stores are described.
The store cannot be used for a backup. This always generates an error message, but does not prevent backups to other stores taking place.
The store cannot be used for a backup. The program will be terminated.

The states are recognized using the following tests (in this order):

In order to minimize storage requirements, when a backup is made, rsbackup selects recent backups to use as link targets. Where possible, rsync will create hardlinks between the new backup and the link target, instead of making a new copy of an unchanged file.

At present up to two backups may be selected as link targets, according to the following rules:

/etc/rsbackup/config
Configuration file. See rsbackup(5)
The backup records. See SCHEMA below.
One backup for a volume.
If this file exists then no existing backup will be considered as a hardlink target until a new backup has succeeded (at which point it is deleted).
Flag file for an incomplete backup.

backups.db is a SQLite database. It contains a single table with the following definition: 

CREATE TABLE backup (
  host TEXT,
  volume TEXT,
  device TEXT,
  id TEXT,
  time INTEGER,
  pruned INTEGER,
  rc INTEGER,
  status INTEGER,
  log BLOB,
  PRIMARY KEY (host,volume,device,id)
)

Each row represents a backup. The meanings of the fields are as follows:

The name of the host the backup was taken from.
The name of the volume the backup was taken from.
The name of the device the backup was written to.
The unique identifier for the backup. Currently this is the date the backup was made, in the format YYYY-MM-DD but this may be changed in the future.
The time that the backup was started, as a time_t.
The time that backup pruning started (if it is underway) or finished (if it is complete), as a time_t.
The exit status of the backup process. 0 means success.
Status of this backup. See below.
The log output of rsync(1) and hooks. If the backup status is pruning or pruned (see below) then this contains the reason for the pruning.

Possible status values are:

0
Unknown status. Not normally seen.
1
The backup is underway, or rsbackup was interrupted.
2
Backup is complete.
3
Backup has failed.
4
Pruning has started.
5
Pruning has completed.

rsbackup is not designed with concurrent access to this table in mind. Therefore it is recommended that you only modify its contents when the program is not running.

Older versions of rsbackup stored the logs for each backup in a separate file. If such files are encountered then rsbackup will automatically populate backups.db from them and then delete them.

Older versions of rsbackup logged pruning information to a pruning logfile. These files will be deleted at the same rate as records of pruned backups in the database. They are not included in the report.

rsbackup-graph(1), rsbackup.cron(1), rsbackup-mount(1), rsbackup-snapshot-hook(1), rsync(1), rsbackup(5)

Richard Kettlewell <rjk@greenend.org.uk>