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Revision as of 19:45, 7 April 2009
, 19:45, 7 April 2009Simple Howto on automating remote backups using cURL
===Introduction===
This HowTo describes a simple way to backup you SME Server remotely using cURL and requires no changes to your SME Server. Further, cURL requires no user interaction and can be scripted or automated using cron to perform regular backups.
===Pre-Requisites===
There are two simple pre-requisites.
1) The machine performing the backup must have web access to the server-manager of the SME Server being backed up. That is, you must be able to get to the manual web backup page from a web browser on the machine that will do the backup.<br>
2) The machine that will perform the backup must have a copy of curl installed on it.
===The Basics===
The basic concept is very simple. We will simply use the curl command to imitatate the manual desktop backup procedure that you would perform manually. During a manual desktop backup you will need to do two things:
1) Log on to the Server Manager. <br>
2) Perform a "Backup to Desktop" from the Backup and restore page.
These two actions map to the following cURL commands:
curl -f -s -k -b /tmp/sme_cookies -c /tmp/sme_cookies -F username=admin -F password=your_password \
<nowiki>https://your_sme_server/server-common/cgi-bin/login</nowiki>
curl -f -s -k -b /tmp/sme_cookies -F function=desktop-backup -F state=perform \
<nowiki>https://your_sme_server/server-manager/cgi-bin/backup > backupfile.tar.gz</nowiki>
Where:
Each curl commands should be on one line and the \ removed
your_password is replaced by your password
your_sme_server is replaced with the name or IP number of the SME Server you wish to backup
backupfile.tar.gz is the name you want to save the backup as
{{Note box|Full information on cURL can be found in the [http://curl.haxx.se/docs/manpage.html cURL manual]
The Options I used are:
-f Fail silently
-s Silent, I.E. don't show a progress meter
-b <cookies> Send cookies to server
-c <cookies> Save cookies here, this is where it stashes your login credentials between step 1) and 2)
-F Fill in form field
<url>
}}
===Automating backups with cURL and cron===
Now that we can pull a backup from an SME Server without any user interaction and without adding any software to the standard SME Server installation we can now automate backups by pulling the backups to our backup machine.
Automating the backups is simply a matter of automating the above command on a calendar.
As the machine I was using to do the backup was also a Linux machine, the simple solution was to use cron.
{{Note box|All the following is done on the machine doing the backup NOT the SME Server you are backing up. No changes are ever made to the SME Server.}}
Create a simple cronjob to perform the backup using crontab -e. Here I have a user smebackup that has the following cron entry:
45 21 * * * umask 077 && /home/smebackup/bin/do_backups
This starts a backup at 21:45 every day. The umask prevents other users on the machine reading the backups and is optional.
In smebackups home folder I have a bin folder to contain the do_backups script that is a simple modification to the commands above.
#!/bin/sh
curl -f -s -k -b /tmp/sme_cookies -c /tmp/sme_cookies -F username=admin -F password=your_password \
<nowiki>https://snoopy/server-common/cgi-bin/login</nowiki>
curl -f -s -k -b /tmp/sme_cookies -F function=desktop-backup -F state=perform \
<nowiki>https://snoopy/server-manager/cgi-bin/backup > /home/smebackup/sme-snoopy-`/bin/date +\%d`.tgz</nowiki>
The use of date in the filename will append the day of the month to the filename this will mean that a new backup will be created for every day of the month and overwrite them next month, obviously if the next month has fewer days you may be left with a couple of backups from last month. This process can be enhanced or changed as required.
===Other Extensions===
In my case several of the machines I backup are behind firewalls and can not be accessed via ssh or alternative methods. This however is not a problem for cURL if the firewalls allow http/https traffic even if a proxy needs to be used.
To use a proxy with cURL you can simply add:
-x your_proxy_server:your_proxy_port
----
[[Category:Howto]] [[Category:Administration]]
This HowTo describes a simple way to backup you SME Server remotely using cURL and requires no changes to your SME Server. Further, cURL requires no user interaction and can be scripted or automated using cron to perform regular backups.
===Pre-Requisites===
There are two simple pre-requisites.
1) The machine performing the backup must have web access to the server-manager of the SME Server being backed up. That is, you must be able to get to the manual web backup page from a web browser on the machine that will do the backup.<br>
2) The machine that will perform the backup must have a copy of curl installed on it.
===The Basics===
The basic concept is very simple. We will simply use the curl command to imitatate the manual desktop backup procedure that you would perform manually. During a manual desktop backup you will need to do two things:
1) Log on to the Server Manager. <br>
2) Perform a "Backup to Desktop" from the Backup and restore page.
These two actions map to the following cURL commands:
curl -f -s -k -b /tmp/sme_cookies -c /tmp/sme_cookies -F username=admin -F password=your_password \
<nowiki>https://your_sme_server/server-common/cgi-bin/login</nowiki>
curl -f -s -k -b /tmp/sme_cookies -F function=desktop-backup -F state=perform \
<nowiki>https://your_sme_server/server-manager/cgi-bin/backup > backupfile.tar.gz</nowiki>
Where:
Each curl commands should be on one line and the \ removed
your_password is replaced by your password
your_sme_server is replaced with the name or IP number of the SME Server you wish to backup
backupfile.tar.gz is the name you want to save the backup as
{{Note box|Full information on cURL can be found in the [http://curl.haxx.se/docs/manpage.html cURL manual]
The Options I used are:
-f Fail silently
-s Silent, I.E. don't show a progress meter
-b <cookies> Send cookies to server
-c <cookies> Save cookies here, this is where it stashes your login credentials between step 1) and 2)
-F Fill in form field
<url>
}}
===Automating backups with cURL and cron===
Now that we can pull a backup from an SME Server without any user interaction and without adding any software to the standard SME Server installation we can now automate backups by pulling the backups to our backup machine.
Automating the backups is simply a matter of automating the above command on a calendar.
As the machine I was using to do the backup was also a Linux machine, the simple solution was to use cron.
{{Note box|All the following is done on the machine doing the backup NOT the SME Server you are backing up. No changes are ever made to the SME Server.}}
Create a simple cronjob to perform the backup using crontab -e. Here I have a user smebackup that has the following cron entry:
45 21 * * * umask 077 && /home/smebackup/bin/do_backups
This starts a backup at 21:45 every day. The umask prevents other users on the machine reading the backups and is optional.
In smebackups home folder I have a bin folder to contain the do_backups script that is a simple modification to the commands above.
#!/bin/sh
curl -f -s -k -b /tmp/sme_cookies -c /tmp/sme_cookies -F username=admin -F password=your_password \
<nowiki>https://snoopy/server-common/cgi-bin/login</nowiki>
curl -f -s -k -b /tmp/sme_cookies -F function=desktop-backup -F state=perform \
<nowiki>https://snoopy/server-manager/cgi-bin/backup > /home/smebackup/sme-snoopy-`/bin/date +\%d`.tgz</nowiki>
The use of date in the filename will append the day of the month to the filename this will mean that a new backup will be created for every day of the month and overwrite them next month, obviously if the next month has fewer days you may be left with a couple of backups from last month. This process can be enhanced or changed as required.
===Other Extensions===
In my case several of the machines I backup are behind firewalls and can not be accessed via ssh or alternative methods. This however is not a problem for cURL if the firewalls allow http/https traffic even if a proxy needs to be used.
To use a proxy with cURL you can simply add:
-x your_proxy_server:your_proxy_port
----
[[Category:Howto]] [[Category:Administration]]
