Difference between revisions of "Affa"

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<span style='font-size:200%'>Automated Remote Disk Archiver</span>
+
{{Languages|Affa}}
  
 +
{{Warning box| 1st Sept 2022 A recent fix to rsync rsync-3.1.2-11.el7_9.x86_64 causes Affa to silently fail. See below.}}
  
<span style='font-size:150%;color:red;letter-spacing:1ex'>UNDER CONSTRUCTION</span>
+
{{Level|Advanced}}
  
 +
===Warning===
  
=== Maintainer ===
+
{{Warning box| rsync-3.1.2-11.el7_9.x86_64 causes Affa to silently fail.}}
Michael Weinberger
 
  
Affa was contributed on [http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=36499.0 Thu Apr 05, 2007]
+
You can see the failure in your logs but nothing beyond that. No files will be backed up after you have installed this update to rsync.
  
 +
See the link to Bug 12165 below.
  
 +
The only current fix is to downgrade rsync on the Affa server. It does not matter on the Target server.
  
=== Description ===
+
We are working on a solution and have test code running and will push a fix as soon as we can.
The main purpose of this affa package is to turn a SME 7 Server into a dedicated backup box in a few minutes. Affa backups as many as you like SME servers or any other servers which have sshd running and rsync installed. Once it was configured, Affa runs reliable and unattended and send warning message in case of an error.  
 
  
All backup archive are full backups. As Affa make use of the hardlink technique. Therefore a new full backup only needs disk space for the differences plus the filesystem overhead for the hardlinks and directories (which is typically 2-3%).
+
Do please contact us on the bug if you want to help test. A fix will be available faster if you do.
 +
 +
{{usefulnote}}
 +
 
 +
===Maintainer===
 +
Maintainers(s) Affa3: Arnaud, stephdl (and please see above note.)<br>
 +
Copyright (C) 2004-2012 by Michael Weinberger<br>
 +
===Version===
 +
{{#smeversion: smeserver-affa}}
 +
 
 +
===Description===
 +
The main purpose of this affa package is to make a SME Server a dedicated backup box in a few minutes. Affa backs up as many SME servers as you like or any other servers which have sshd running and rsync installed. Once it is configured, Affa runs reliably unattended and sends warning messages in case of any errors.
 +
 
 +
All backup archives are full backups, as Affa makes use of the hardlink technique. Therefore a new full backup only needs disk space for the differences plus the filesystem overhead for the hardlinks and directories (which is typically 2-3%).
  
 
Affa is based on the rsync program and supports the rsync --compress option. This allows you to run backups over the internet or VPN. A typical setup is one or more Affa backup servers placed in different locations, which backup the production server(s) over the VPN.
 
Affa is based on the rsync program and supports the rsync --compress option. This allows you to run backups over the internet or VPN. A typical setup is one or more Affa backup servers placed in different locations, which backup the production server(s) over the VPN.
  
A special feature is the rise option, which allows you to rise the backup server to your production server from a backup archive in case of a dead loss of your production server. The rise is executed within a extremly short time, even with huge ammount of data. The rise feature uses hardlinks and therefore does not use up additional disk space.
+
A special feature is the rise option, which allows you to rise the backup server to your production server from a backup archive in case of a dead loss of your production server. The rise is executed within a extremely short time, even with huge amount of data. The rise feature uses hardlinks and therefore does not use up additional disk space.
 +
 
 +
The rise feature can also be used to upgrade from a lower version to a higher version of SME. This also work from SME 8.1 to 9. For this to work you need 2 separate installations of SME. One is the actual running server and the other is an affa backup server with a newer version of SME Server where you execute the rise command. See more here: [[Moving SME to new Hardware]]
 +
 
 +
A simple way to have a server running with maximum up time is to duplicate the hardware. E.g. to have 2 separate hardware boxes or virtual servers on separate hardware. One is the actual server and the other one is a backup system that in a very short time in case of problems can be upgraded to the actual server with the rise command. This also allow you to upgrade the SME Server software with minimum down time!
 +
 
 +
Affa is a command line tool for system administrators and is intentionally designed without a GUI. Therefore it can be efficiently managed on the console and over slow internet connections.
 +
 
 +
'''Note:''' This document also refers to the Affa Version 2 which is not maintained anymore. Information on Affa 3 will be gradually added here once it has been more tested.
 +
 
 +
====Affa features at a glance====
 +
 
 +
*Affa is secure: All transfers and connections are made by using the ssh protocol with public/private key authentication
 +
*Periodically runs unattended full backups. Only differences to the previous full backup are transferred over the network
 +
*Using rsync with optional bandwidth limit and compression allows backups over the internet
 +
*Uses hardlink technique, i.e. physical disk space only needed for the differences between two full backups
 +
*Keeps a configurable number of scheduled, daily, weekly, monthly and yearly full backup archives
 +
*The archives are browseable. No need to unpack them first.
 +
*Archives can be mapped to a Samba share.
 +
*Backup jobs are started by the cron daemon
 +
*Interrupted jobs continuing with already transfered data when restarted
 +
*Backups the default e-smith directories and files, when property SMEServer is set to yes
 +
*Additional directories and files can be included
 +
*Directories and files can be excluded from the backup
 +
*Non-SME server linux systems can be backed up by setting the SMEServer property to no and using an include list
 +
*In ESXi mode, running virtual machines can be backed up. See [[Backup of ESXi Virtual Machines using Affa]]
 +
*Configurable nice level for rsync processes on the backup and source server
 +
*Optional run of custom programs before and after a job run (e.g. running tape backup)
 +
*Checks the disk space left after a job run with warning levels strict, normal or risky
 +
*Extensive checking of failure conditions
 +
*Sends failure messages to a configurable list of email addresses
 +
*Sends a warning message, if the backup server runs out of disk space
 +
*Installs an optional watchdog on the source server in case the backupserver fails (SME Server only)
 +
*Watchdog sends warning, if an expected backup did not run (SME Server only)
 +
*Watchdog sends a daily reminder message, if the error continues unchecked (SME Server only)
 +
*Option to display current status of all jobs showing times of last and next run, size and disk usage
 +
*Status can be mailed on a daily, weekly or monthly schedule
 +
*Option to display all existing archives of a job shown date, number of files, size and bytes tranferred from the source
 +
*Option to send (and revoke) the public key to the source server (SME Server and ESXi only)
 +
*Option to rise the backup server to a production server from a backup (SME Server only)
 +
*The rise feature does not physically move data and therefore is extremly fast and needs (almost) no extra disk space
 +
*Rise option can be run remotely as the NIC driver configuration of the backup server are preserved
 +
*Compares installed RPMs on source with backup server. Sends warning message, if not in sync
 +
*Undo rise option to restore the backup server
 +
*Configurable via a e-smith style db, with one record for each job and a default record for all jobs
 +
*Logs to /var/log/affa/JOB.log and /var/log/affa/affa.log with optional debug switch for higher verbosity
 +
*Log files are rotated weekly, with 5 logs kept
 +
 
 +
<div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="text-align:left" data-expandtext="Obsolete Affa 2 instructions &darr;" data-collapsetext="less &uarr;">{{Warning box|SME v7/8/9 are no longer supported.}}
 +
 
 +
</div>
 +
 
 +
===Installation of Affa 3===
 +
The following instructions assume that a fresh Affa 3 installation is made on a fresh dedicated SME server which serves as a dedicated backup server ('affabox‘). No jobs are migrated from Affa 2. For using an existing SME server, just skip the instructions how to setup a fresh SME box.
 +
 
 +
Setup a dedicated machine with SME 8.1 or SME 9.0 from CDROM. Use the following example settings:
 +
<ol><li>Domain name: athome.xx (use your existing domain name)</li>
 +
<li>Host name: affabox (must not match to existing host)</li>
 +
<li>IP address: 192.168.0.10 (must not match to existing IP address)</li>
 +
<li>Subnet: 255.255.255.0</li>
 +
<li>role: Server only</li>
 +
<li>Gateway: 192.168.0.1 (use your existing gateway)</li>
 +
<li>DHCP: DEactivate</li>
 +
<li>DNS server: 192.168.0.1 (use your existing DNS server)</li>
 +
<li>activate changes: yes</li>
 +
<li>The fresh server will then restart with the above settings.</li>
 +
</ol>
 +
 
 +
To update your server, login as user root on local console. Use 'top' command to display running jobs. Wait until 'yum' stopped running.
 +
yum clean all
 +
yum update
 +
The fresh server will be updated.
 +
signal-event post-upgrade
 +
signal-event reboot
 +
The server will reboot. Afterwards it is ready for installation of Affa 3.
 +
 
 +
Login as root on local or remote SSH console of ''affabox''.
 +
 
 +
 
 +
 +
 
 +
=For SME10=
 +
 
 +
There is a new version 3.3.1
 +
 
 +
However. Affa is a very complicated piece of work with a huge number of options and many have probably not been sufficiently tested depite requests for testing and feedback. Most of the major components should work but there may well be a plethora of edge cases that fail.
 +
 
 +
{{Warning box|Do not rely on this as your sole backup. Make sure you have another type of backup as well}}
 +
 
 +
{{Warning box|Do not use ANY Koozali SME v9 affa versions with v10. It will probably break both your backups and your new server}}
 +
 
 +
We have done very minimal testing on migration from v9 to v10.
 +
 
 +
See https://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11024
 +
 
 +
 
 +
Under normal circumstances you would execute this to install :
 +
 
 +
yum install smeserver-extrarepositories-epel smeserver-extrarepositories-openfusion
 +
signal-event yum-modify
 +
config set UnsavedChanges no
 +
 
 +
yum install --enablerepo=smecontribs,epel,openfusion smeserver-affa
 +
 
 +
During development install can be executed with:
 +
yum install --enablerepo=smedev,epel,openfusion smeserver-affa
  
==== Affa features at a glance ====
 
* Makes full backups with every scheduled run
 
* Keeps configurable number of scheduled, daily, weekly, monthly and yearly full backup archives
 
* Using rsync with optional compression for low traffic allows backups over the internet/VPN
 
* Uses hardlink technique, i.e. physical disk space only needed for the differences between two full backups
 
* Backup jobs are started by crond
 
* Backups the default e-smith directories/files with property SMEServer set to yes
 
* Additional directories/files can be included
 
* Directories/files can be excluded from the backup
 
* Non-SME server linuxes can be backuped by setting SMEServer property to no and using a include list
 
* Configurable nice level for rsync processes on backup and source server
 
* Optional run of custom programs before and after a job run (e.g. running tape backup)
 
* Checks the disk space left after a job run with warning levels strict, normal or risky
 
* Extensive checking of failure conditions
 
* Sends failure messages to a configurable list of email addresses
 
* Sends warning message, if the backup server run out of disk space
 
* Installs an optional watchdog on the source server for the case the backupserver fails
 
* Watchdog sends warning, if an expected backup did not run
 
* Watchdog sends a daily reminder message, if the error continues unchecked
 
* Option to display current status of all jobs showing times of last and next run
 
* Status can be mailed on a daily, weekly or monthly schedule
 
* Option to display reports of all stored backups shown size, tranferred volume, disk usage and more
 
* Report can be sent to the configured email addresses
 
* Option to send the public DSA key to the source server
 
* Option to rise the backup server to a production server from a backup. For SME only
 
* The rise option does not physically move data and therefore is extremly fast and needs no disk space
 
* Rise option can be run remotely as the ethernet drivers of the backup server are preserved
 
* Compares installed RPMs on source with backup server. Sends warning message, if not in sync
 
* Undo rise option to restore the backup server
 
* Configurable via a e-smith style db, with one record for each job and a default record for all jobs
 
* Logs in /var/log/affa with optional debug switch for high verbosity
 
* Log files are rotated weekly, with 5 logs kept
 
  
  
 +
Please post bug reports in the [http://bugs.contribs.org bug tracker]
  
 +
<headertabs />
  
=== Download and Installation ===
+
The server again needs to be updated.
Download the ''smeserver-affa'' package from [http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/contribs/michaelw/sme7/affa/ one of the SME Server contrib mirrors].<br>
+
signal-event post-upgrade
Download the ''perl-Filesys-DiskSpace'' package from [http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/perl-Filesys-DiskSpace/ DAG] or from one of the mirrors above.
+
signal-event reboot
<br>
+
The server will reboot. Afterwards Affa 3 is ready for use.
Install the RPMs.
 
  
=== Quick start example ===
+
{{Warning box| Note that on SME10, a SSH [https://wiki.contribs.org/AutoBlock AutoBlock] feature interferes with the Affa requirement for regular SSH logins! You might have to disable this feature, aor increase the MaxAuthtries to allow Affa to operate correctly.}}
You have a SME 7 production server with hostname 'prodbox‘ and IP 10.200.48.1.<br>
 
Set up a second SME 7 box as your backupserver with hostname 'affabox‘ and IP 10.200.48.2.  
 
  
# log into the 'affabox' and install the packages as described above.
+
===Creation of backup jobs===
# generate the DSA keys and send the public key to the 'prodbox'<br><code># affa --send-keys 10.200.48.1 </code>
+
Job configurations of Affa 3 are no longer stored in an e-smith style database. They are stored in configuration files located in ''/etc/affa'' . Create your configuration files in this directory, e.g.
# copy the config helper script sample<br><code># cp /usr/lib/affa/jobconfig-sample.pl /root/prodbox-job.pl </code>
+
touch /etc/affa/backup-smeserver.conf
# edit /root/prodbox-job.pl and set<br><code>my $jobname='prodbox';</code><br>and<br><code>'remoteHostName‘=>'10.200.48.1',</code>
+
where ''backup-smeserver'' is your jobname, and add content as described below.
# write the configuration<br><code># /root/prodbox-job.pl</code>
 
# run the job manually<br><code># affa --backup prodbox</code>
 
  
=== Configuration ===
+
====Quick start example====
The configuration is stored in an e-smith style database. Use the db command to configure Affa.
+
You have a SME production server with hostname 'smeserver‘ and IP 192.168.0.2.<br>
The jobname is the record key with the type 'job'.<br>To setup a new job enter:
+
You have a second SME box as your backup server with hostname 'affabox‘ and IP 192.168.0.10.  
<br><code># db affa set myprodsrv job</code><br>
 
then set the properties<br>
 
<code># db affa setprop myprodsrv remoteHostName 192.168.1.1</code><br>
 
<code># db affa setprop myprodsrv TimeSchedule '0030,0730,1130,1330,1730,2030'</code><br>
 
<code># db affa setprop myprodsrv Description 'My Production Server'</code><br>
 
<code># db affa setprop myprodsrv status enable</code><br>
 
and so on...
 
  
Alternatively you can you use a script as described above in the 'Quick start' chapter.
+
Login to your 'affabox' as root and edit ''/etc/affa/backup-smeserver.conf'' . Using e.g. editor ''nano'', create the following example job configuration file for jobname ''backup-smeserver'' :
 +
[backup-smeserver]
 +
remoteHostName=192.168.0.2
 +
SMEServer=yes
 +
Watchdog=yes
 +
RPMCheck=yes
 +
ConnectionCheckTimeout=120
 +
Debug=no
 +
Description=Backup of 192.168.0.2 smeserver.athome.xx
 +
DiskSpaceWarn=strict
 +
RootDir=/var/affa
 +
TimeSchedule=0630
 +
localNice=15
 +
remoteNice=15
 +
rsync--inplace=yes
 +
rsyncCompress=no
 +
rsyncTimeout=900
 +
scheduledKeep=1
 +
dailyKeep=7
 +
weeklyKeep=4
 +
monthlyKeep=12
 +
yearlyKeep=1
 +
status=enabled
  
To verify your work, type:<br>
+
If you have a Letsencrypt certificate on the production server, then you should also include
<code># db affa show myprodsrv</code>
+
Include=/etc/dehydrated
  
==== Affa configuration properties ====
+
Then save your job configuration file.
{| border="1" cellpadding="3"
+
 
 +
Now check that your configuration is OK:
 +
affa --configcheck
 +
This should throw out no errors. Now create / send key files to your productive smeserver:
 +
affa --send-key backup-smeserver
 +
The following output should appear on the console:
 +
Job sme-backup: Generating RSA keys...
 +
Successfully created RSA key pair.
 +
root@192.168.0.2's password: <Enter password of 192.168.0.2/smeserver and hit ENTER>
 +
Public key sent to 192.168.0.2
 +
Now run your job manually, both for test purposes, as well as to create RSA keys:
 +
affa --run backup-smeserver
 +
The following output should appear on the console:
 +
The authenticity of host 'backup-smeserver (192.168.0.2)' can't be established.
 +
RSA key fingerprint is 3b..........65.
 +
Are you sure you want ton continue connecting (yes/no)? <yes>
 +
Now your backup job should run for the first time. Depending on the volume of the files, this takes quite a while.
 +
 
 +
Once the job is done, check that the archive is available:
 +
affa –-list-archives
 +
 
 +
or run the job a second time:
 +
affa --run backup-smeserver
 +
Note that you won't be asked for the password again. Note as well, that this second run of the job ''backup-smeserver'' should run considerably faster, because not all files are copied again: just the difference to the previous run is backed up, the rest is stored as hard links to the existing file copies.
 +
 
 +
Check that the second archive is available too:
 +
affa --list-archives
 +
 
 +
From here you are able to work as with Affa 2. Modify your config file as required and described below. Automate the backup using the command ''affa --make-cronjobs'', see below.
 +
 
 +
====Job configuration properties====
 +
'''Note 1:''' The default values shown in this table are the Affa program defaults and not to be confused with the preset values in the job configuration files, e.g. backup-smeserver.conf.
 +
 
 +
'''Note 2:''' The complete documentation of the settings of Affa3 is available in [http://affa.sourceforge.net/AffaPdfMan.pdf] . It should be taken in consideration!
 +
 
 +
'''Note 3:''' Affa 3 for SME is a fork of [http://affa.sourceforge.net/ Affa 3 for CentOS]. It adds a few options back again which have been removed. Generally the configuration properties as described [http://wiki.nikoforge.org/Affa_Configuration/ here] do apply. Arnaud added the following functions for SME:
 +
<ul>
 +
<li>The parameter “SMEServer”</li>
 +
<li>The parameter and function “Watchdog”</li>
 +
<li>The parameter and function “RPMCheck”</li>
 +
<li>The functions “--rise” and “--undo-rise”</li>
 +
</ul>
 +
Consequently the list below should reproduce the list for the unforked Affa 3 version, plus adding the properties above. For details refer to [https://www.guedel.eu/index.php/informatique/sme-server-8/affa-v3 Arnaud's website].
 +
{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3"
 +
|-
 +
|'''Property'''||'''Value'''||'''Multivalue'''||'''Default'''||'''Description'''
 +
|-
 +
|remoteHostName
 +
|FQHN or IP
 +
|no
 +
|<none>
 +
|FQHN or IP of the source host (mandatory)
 +
|-
 +
|remoteUser
 +
|account
 +
|no
 +
|root
 +
|The user account to be used with all ssh logins. May be case sensitive, e.g. Administrator account on Windows
 +
|-
 +
|Description
 +
|text string
 +
|no
 +
|<none>
 +
|Any text that describes the job
 +
|-
 +
|TimeSchedule
 +
|HHMM
 +
|yes
 +
|2230
 +
|The time the job will run. Use exactly 4 digits, no colon, no point. '''Important:''' Using the proper format HHMM is essential. Badly formatted TimeSchedule will cause strange Perl errors.  Multiple times can be achieved by repeating the line, each line with a different time.
 
|-
 
|-
| '''Property''' || '''Value''' || '''Description'''
+
|status
 +
|enabled ''or'' disabled
 +
|no
 +
|enabled
 +
|When set to disabled, no cron entries will made. You can still run a job manually.
 
|-
 
|-
| remoteHostName
+
|Include
| FQHN or IP || of the source host
+
|full path
 +
|yes
 +
|<none>
 +
|File(s) or directory(s) to be included in the backup.
 
|-
 
|-
| TimeSchedule
+
|Exclude
| HHMM,HHMM,... || doesn't need to be ordered. At least one time is mandatory
+
|full path
 +
|yes
 +
|<none>
 +
|File(s) or directory(s) to be excluded from the backup.
 
|-
 
|-
| Description
+
|RootDir
| text string ||
+
|full path
 +
|no
 +
|/var/affa
 +
|where to store the backup archives. Do not use /home/e-smith or /root as these are included in the backup and therefore the rise option will not work! Recommended: /var/affa
 
|-
 
|-
| scheduledKeep
+
|scheduledKeep
| integer >= 2 || how many of the scheduled should be kept
+
|integer >= 1
 +
|no
 +
|1
 +
|how many of the scheduled backups to be kept
 
|-
 
|-
| dailyKeep<br>weeklyKeep<br>monthlyKeep<br>yearlyKeep
+
|dailyKeep
| integer >= 1 || how many of the daily, weekly, monthly or yearly backups should be kept
+
|integer >= 0
 +
|no
 +
|7
 +
|how many of the daily backups to be kept
 
|-
 
|-
| SMEServer
+
|weeklyKeep
| yes ''or'' no || when set to yes the default e-smith directories are automatically included and the properties RPMCheck and Watchdog can be used
+
|integer >= 0
 
+
|no
 +
|4
 +
|how many of the weekly backups to be kept
 +
|-
 +
|monthlyKeep
 +
|integer >= 0
 +
|no
 +
|12
 +
|how many of the monthly backups to be kept
 +
|-
 +
|yearlyKeep
 +
|integer >= 0
 +
|no
 +
|2
 +
|how many of the yearly backups to be kept
 +
|-
 +
|EmailAddress
 +
|name@domain.com
 +
|yes
 +
|root
 +
|comma separated list of mail addresses, where the messages should be sent to<br>'''Note:''' By default Affa only sends messages on errors, never on success (see property chattyOnSuccess).
 +
|-
 +
|RetryAttempts
 +
|integer >= 0
 +
|no
 +
|4
 +
|When set to a value>0, Affa re-run a failed job RetryAttempts times with a delay of RetryAfter seconds.
 +
|-
 +
|RetryAfter
 +
|seconds >= 0
 +
|no
 +
|900
 +
|when set to a value>0, wait RetryAfter seconds before re-running the job after an error. Only applicable with RetryAttempts>0
 +
|-
 +
|RetryNotification
 +
|yes ''or'' no
 +
|no
 +
|no
 +
|when set to no, Affa does not send an error message when a job has failed and RetryAttempts is configured. An error message is only sent when the last attempt has failed.
 +
|-
 +
|NRPEtrigger
 +
|hours
 +
|no
 +
|24
 +
|NRPE reports a job as critical when the last successful run is older then NRPEtrigger hours. To exclude the job from monitoring set to a value < 0.
 +
|-
 +
|SambaShare
 +
|yes ''or'' no
 +
|no
 +
|no
 +
|Access to the job archives via CIFS protocol.
 
|-
 
|-
| Include[0]<br>Include[1]<br>...
+
|SambaValidUser
| full path || additional files or directories to include
+
|local account
 +
|yes
 +
|affa
 +
|User who has permission to access the job archives via the CIFS protocol.
 
|-
 
|-
| Exclude[0]<br>Exclude[1]<br>...
+
|preJobCommand<br> preJobCommandRemote
| full path || additional files or directories exclude from backup
+
|path relative to /etc/affa/scripts/
 +
|yes
 +
|<none>
 +
|Scripts to be executed before a job run. The job name and type (scheduled, daily etc.) are passed as arguments to the program. The preJobCommandRemote scripts are copied to the remote server and then executed there. The scripts are executed in alphabetical order. Use a numerical prefix if you need a specific order e.g. 01scriptB, 02remotescriptA, 03scriptA. Use the included prescript-sample.pl and prescriptRemote-sample.pl as a starting point for own scripts.<br>'''Note:''' If you use the parameter “SMEServer=yes”, you may delete the “Included” relative to SME default directories in the jobconfig.ini: they will be backuped automatically.
 
|-
 
|-
| RPMCheck
+
|postJobCommand<br> postJobCommandRemote
| yes ''or'' no || compares the packages installation of the source host with this affa backup host. Sends a message with diff list if not in sync. This check is usefull, if you want have the option to rise the backup server to a production server from a backup.
+
|path relative to /etc/affa/scripts/
 +
|yes
 +
|<none>
 +
|Scripts to be executed after a job run. The job name, the type (scheduled, daily etc.) and the exit code of the job run are passed as arguments to the program. The postJobCommandRemote scripts are copied to the remote server and then executed there. The scripts are executed in alphabetical order. Use a numerical prefix if you need a specific order e.g. 01scriptB, 02remotescriptA, 03scriptA. Use the included postscript-sample.pl and postscriptRemote-sample.pl as a starting point for own scripts.<br>'''Note:''' If you use the parameter “SMEServer=yes”, you may delete the “Included” relative to SME default directories in the jobconfig.ini: they will be backuped automatically.
 
|-
 
|-
| DiskSpaceWarn
+
|dedup
| strict ''or'' normal ''or'' risky ''or'' none || run a disk space check after a job has been completed. With level 'strict' a warning message will be sent, if the available space is less then the size of the just completed backup. With level 'normal'/'risky' the message is sent, if less than 50%/10% of the backup size is still available.
+
|yes ''or'' no
 +
|no
 +
|no
 +
|The purpose of the deduplication is to remove duplicate files to save backup space. When set to 'yes' file deduplication is run after the synchronization has been completed. It looks for files that have identical content, user, group and permissions and replace duplicates by hardlinks. Deduplication scans the just completed archive and the previous one, that usually is
 +
scheduled.0 and daily.0 or scheduled.0 and scheduled.1. Consider this scenario: A user has renamed directories or files. Rsync sees those as new ones and copies them. Deduplication finds the identical copies in the previous archive and replace them by hardlinks. To use deduplication the Freedup program needs to be installed. Affa actually runs freedup -upg scheduled.0 <previous_archive>.
 
|-
 
|-
| localNice
+
|dedupKill
| -19...+19 || run rsync local process niced.  
+
|yes ''or'' no
 +
|no
 +
|no
 +
|When set to 'no' the job ignores affa --kill or affa --killall when deduplication is running. This is useful in the context of killAt which is typically used to stop bandwith utilisation.
 
|-
 
|-
| remoteNice
+
|DiskSpaceWarn
| -19...+19 || run rsync process on source niced.  
+
|strict ''or'' normal ''or'' risky ''or'' none
 +
|no
 +
|strict
 +
|Checks disk space remainin on the backup device and issue a warning via email.
 
|-
 
|-
| Watchdog
+
|sshPort
| yes ''or'' no || when a job is started, affa installs a watchdog script on the source in /etc/cron.d/, which sends a warning message, if the next scheduled job (taken from the TimeSchedule property + 10 minutes) did not run. This guarantees, that you will be notfied even in case of a affa server outage. The watchdog script send a daily reminder message, if the error continues. The next run job replaces the watchdog script with a new trigger time.
+
|service port
 +
|no
 +
|22
 +
|When sshd on the remote host listens on a non-standard port, set the port here.
 
|-
 
|-
| ConnectionCheckTimeout
+
|ConnectionCheckTimeout
| seconds || before the rsync is started on the remote source host, affa check the ssh conncetion and exits with an error after the configured time, if the host does not response.
+
|seconds
 +
|no
 +
|120
 +
|Affa checks the ssh connection before the rsync process is started and exits with an error after the configured time if the host did not respond.
 +
|-
 +
|BandwidthLimit
 +
|integer>=0 kilobytes per second
 +
|no
 +
|0
 +
|Limits the data transfer rate. A value of zero specifies no limit.
 +
|-
 +
|rsyncTimeout
 +
|seconds
 +
|no
 +
|900
 +
|Rsync exits after the configured time if no data was transferred. This avoids infinitely hanging in case of a network error.
 
|-  
 
|-  
| rsyncTimeout
+
|rsyncCompress
| seconds || Rsync exits, if no data is transferred for the configured time. This avoids infinitely hanging in case of a network error.
+
|yes ''or'' no
 +
|no
 +
|yes
 +
|Compress the transferred data. May be useful with slow internet connections. Increases CPU load on remote and backup host.
 
|-  
 
|-  
| rsyncCompress
+
|rsync--inplace
| yes ''or'' no || compress the tranferred data. May be useful with slow internet connections. Increases CPU load on source and backup host.
+
|yes ''or'' no
 +
|no
 +
|yes
 +
|Set to no if the rsync version on the remote hist does not support this option.
 +
|-
 +
|rsync--modify-window
 +
|integer >= 0
 +
|no
 +
|0
 +
|When comparing two timestamps, rsync treats the timestamps as being equal if they differ by no more than the modify-window value. This is normally 0 for an exact match. A value >= 0 is useful if you can't get the clocks of the remote host and the Affa server in sync.
 +
|-
 +
|rsyncOptions
 +
|string
 +
|no
 +
|<none>
 +
|Additional option string to be passed to rsync
 +
|-
 +
|localNice
 +
| -19...+19
 +
|no
 +
|0
 +
|run rsync local process niced.
 +
|-
 +
|remoteNice
 +
| -19...+19
 +
|no
 +
|0
 +
|run rsync process on source niced.
 +
|-
 +
|killAt
 +
|HHMM
 +
|no
 +
|<none>
 +
|The time at which a job will be killed if it was still running. You can use it for example to kill jobs that are running over the internet early in the morning so that your users have the full bandwidth available during office hours.
 +
|-
 +
|resumeKilledAt
 +
|HHMM
 +
|no
 +
|<none>
 +
|The time at which a killed job will be resumed. This allows you to start earlier in the evening than the scheduled time.
 +
|-
 +
|chattyOnSuccess
 +
|integer >= 0
 +
|no
 +
|0
 +
|When set to a value>0, Affa sends a message on a successfully completed job run and decrements the chattyOnSuccess value. When the value has reached zero, Affa falls back to the default and only sends messages on errors.
 +
|-
 +
|AutomountDevice<br>AutomountPoint
 +
|full path
 +
|no
 +
|<none>
 +
|Device and mountpoint of backup device (e.g. USB disk). Device is automounted before a job starts and unmounted after job completion. With both properties empty no automount is done.
 +
|-
 +
|AutomountOptions
 +
|string
 +
|no
 +
|<none>
 +
|An option string passed to the mount command.
 +
|-
 +
|AutoUnmount
 +
|yes ''or'' no
 +
|no
 +
|yes
 +
|When set to 'no' the automounted device stay mounted after the Affa run.
 +
|-
 +
|Debug
 +
|yes ''or'' no
 +
|no
 +
|no
 +
|Set to yes to increase log verbosity.
 +
|-
 +
|remoteRsyncBinary
 +
|full path
 +
|no
 +
|/usr/bin/rsync
 +
|If the rsync program on the remote server is located in non-standard location, set it here
 +
|-
 +
|remoteNiceBinary
 +
|full path
 +
|no
 +
|/bin/nice
 +
|If the nice program on the remote server is located in non-standard location, set it here.
 +
|-
 +
|localRsyncBinary
 +
|full path
 +
|no
 +
|/usr/bin/rsync
 +
|If the local rsync program is located in non-standard location, set it here
 +
|-
 +
|localNiceBinary
 +
|full path
 +
|no
 +
|/bin/nice
 +
|If the nice local program is located in non-standard location, set it here.
 
|-
 
|-
| EmailAddresses
+
|RemoteAuthorizedKeysFile
| name@domain.com,name@domain.com,... || comma separated list of mail addresses  where the messages should be sent to
+
|path relative to remote user's home or full path
 +
|no
 +
|.ssh/authorized_keys2
 +
|If the remote host stores the authorized keys file in a non-standard location, set it here.
 
|-
 
|-
| AutomountDevice<br>AutomountPoint
+
|rsyncdMode
| full path  || Device and mountpoint of backup device (e.g. USB disk). Device is automounted before a job starts and unmounted after job completion. With both properties empty no automount is done.
+
|yes ''or'' no
 +
|no
 +
|no
 +
|Set to yes to connect to the rsync daemon on the remote host (instead of running rsync over ssh).
 
|-
 
|-
| preJobCommand<br>postJobCommand
+
|rsyncdModule
| full path || programs (local on the affa server) to be executed before/after a job run. The jobname and type (scheduled, daily etc.) are passed as arguments to the program. The exit code is additionally passed to the post job command program. See /usr/lib/affa/ for sample perl scripts.
+
|string
 +
|no
 +
|AFFA
 +
|The rsyncd module name (only applicable with rsyncdMode=yes).
 
|-
 
|-
| RootDir
+
|rsyncdUser
| full path || where to store the backup archives, Do not use /home/e-smith or /root as these are included in the backup and therefore the rise otpion will not work! Recommended: /var/affa
+
|string
 +
|no
 +
|affa
 +
|The username for authentication to the rsync daemon (only applicable with rsyncdMode=yes).
 
|-
 
|-
| Debug
+
|rsyncdPassword
| yes ''or'' no || set to yes to increase log verbosity
+
|string
 +
|no
 +
|<none>
 +
|The password for authentication to the rsync daemon (only applicable with rsyncdMode=yes).
 +
 
 
|-
 
|-
| status
+
|globalStatus
| enabled ''or'' disabled || with set to disabled, no cron entries will made. You can still run a job manually.
+
|enabled ''or'' disabled ''or'' jobs
 +
|no
 +
|jobs
 +
|Set to enabled or disabled to overide the status settings in all job sections. When set to value jobs, the status settings in the job sections are effictive.<br>'''Note:''' This property is allowed only in the [GlobalAffaConfig] section.
 
|-
 
|-
| rsync--inplace
+
|sendStatus
| yes ''or'' no || set to no, if the rsync versionon the source does not support this option (like rsync on SME6)
+
|daily ''or'' weekly ''or'' monthly ''or'' never
 +
|no
 +
|weekly
 +
|Defines how frequently the status will be sent.<br>'''Note:''' This property is allowed only in the [GlobalAffaConfig] section.
 +
|-
 +
|SMEServer
 +
|yes ''or'' no
 +
|no
 +
|no
 +
|When set to yes, the default e-smith directories are automatically included and the property RPMCheck=yes can be used.<br>'''Note:''' this property is not implemented in Affa 3 for CentOS. It has been specifically added to the fork for SME.
 +
|-
 +
|RPMCheck
 +
|yes ''or'' no
 +
|no
 +
|no
 +
|Only applicable to jobs that backup a SME server. Compares the packages installation of the source host with this affa backup host. Sends a message with diff list if not in sync. This check is useful, if you want have the option to rise the backup server to a production server from a backup.<br>'''Note:''' this property is not implemented in Affa 3 for CentOS. It has been specifically added to the fork for SME.
 +
|-
 +
|Watchdog
 +
|yes ''or'' no
 +
|no
 +
|yes
 +
|Only applicable to jobs that backups a SME server. When a job is started, affa installs a watchdog script on the source in /etc/cron.d/, which sends a warning message, if the next scheduled job (taken from the TimeSchedule property + 10 minutes) did not run. This guarantees, that you will be notfied even in case of a affa server outage. The watchdog script send a daily reminder message, if the error continues. The next run job replaces the watchdog script with a new trigger time.<br>'''Note:''' this property is not implemented in Affa 3 for CentOS. It has been specifically added to the fork for SME.
 
|}
 
|}
  
=== Example setups ===
+
====Default configuration properties====
==== Standard ====
+
For all 'name=value' properties defaults can be set in the [GlobalAffaConfig] section which are used in all job configuration when the corresponding property is omitted. For example, when these properties are set in [GlobalAffaConfig] section, they can be omitted in the specific job configurations. This is useful, when you set up many similar jobs.
Dedicated Affa server to backup all production servers<br>...
+
 
 +
Example: You want to set the property 'localNice' to 19 for all jobs. Then add the following section in one of your configuration files:
 +
[GlobalAffaConfig]
 +
localNice=19
 +
Consequently you don't need to set this property for your individual jobs. Properties set in the job record override the defaults.
 +
 
 +
====Properties for global Settings====
 +
The following special properties are only applicable to the [GlobalAffaConfig] section:
 +
<ul>
 +
<li>sendStatus</li>
 +
<li>globalStatus</li>
 +
</ul>
 +
 
 +
All jobs can be disabled for execution through 'cronjobs" with setting 'globalStatus' to 'disabled'.
 +
[GlobalAffaConfig]
 +
globalStatus=disabled
 +
 
 +
To re-enable run, either delete the above configuration line, or set to:
 +
globalStatus=jobs
 +
which is the default value.
 +
 
 +
You can also set the value to
 +
globalStatus=enabled
 +
which enforces the the job execution through 'cronjobs' and overrides the specified values in the section for the specific job.
 +
 
 +
===Usage and command line options===
 +
{{Note box|Options can be abbreviated to uniqueness, e.g. --mak is equal to --make-cronjobs}}
 +
'''affa --run JOB'''
 +
Starts a job run. Usually done by the cronjob.
 +
 
 +
'''affa --make-cronjobs'''
 +
Configures the cronjobs as scheduled in the jobs records. Run this command to make changes of time related properties effective i.e. TimeSchedule, killAt and resumeKilledAt properties. By default this command will by executed by 'cronjobs' every 15 minutes. So you don't need to run this command manually, you can also just wait max. 15 minutes before your updates job configurations become effective.
 +
 
 +
'''affa --configcheck'''
 +
Checks the syntax and values in all configuration files found in /etc/affa/. Run this command after modifying the configuration. Lower/Upper case errors in property names are corrected automatically.
 +
 
 +
'''affa --send-key [JOB JOB ...]'''
 +
This first generates the RSA key on the Affa Server, if not already done. Then the public key is send to the hosts 'remoteHostName' as defined in section of each job JOB and generates the job specific ssh known host entry.
 +
{{Note box|When initially doing this step, you will need to temporarily enable "Allow secure shell access using standard passwords" on the source server.}}
 +
 
 +
'''affa --check-connections [JOB JOB ...]'''
 +
Checks the ssh login and if applicable rsyncd auth for all jobs given as arguments. Without any arguments all jobs are checked.
 +
 
 +
'''affa --full-restore [--preserve-newer=no] [--delete=yes] JOB [ARCHIVE]'''
 +
Does a full restore remote server of all backed up files and directories from the backup ARCHIVE. If ARCHIVE is not given, the archive 'scheduled.0' is used as the default. The full restore reconstructs the server as it was at the time of the backup. After the restore the source host reboots.
 +
 
 +
With option --preserve-newer=yes files on the remote server with modification time newer than on the backup are not overwritten.
 +
 
 +
With option --delete=yes all files on the remote server, which are not in the backup, are deleted.
 +
 
 +
If the parameter “SMEServer=yes” is set, the signal-event pre-restore and signal-event post-upgrade will be used automatically.
 +
 
 +
'''affa --list-archives JOB'''
 +
Displays a table of all present archives of job JOB with date, number of files, size and and bytes received. While column buTime shows the actual rsync time, the column ddTime shows the length of the subsequent deduplication run. ddYld is the gained deduplication yield in bytes.
 +
 
 +
<small><pre>
 +
Affa version 3.1.0-0 on affa-2.mydomain.com
 +
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
 +
| Job: fshare-ak                                                              |
 +
| Description: Fileserver AK                                                  |
 +
| Directory: /var/affa/fshare-ak/                                              |
 +
| Hostname: 10.204.104.4                                                      |
 +
| Email: sysadmin@mydomain.com                                                |
 +
+-----+----------------------+--------+--------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
 +
| Run | Completion date      | buTime | ddTime | ddYld | Files | Size  | Recvd |
 +
+-----+----------------------+--------+--------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
 +
| Y 0 | Wed 2010-06-23 20:26 | 11m53s |      - |    - |  412k |  143G |  470M |
 +
+-----+----------------------+--------+--------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
 +
| M11 | Sun 2010-08-29 20:22 |  7m50s |      - |    - |  417k |  153G |  14M |
 +
| M10 | Sun 2010-09-26 20:23 | 8m57s  |      - |    - |  430k |  156G |  14M |
 +
| M 9 | Sun 2010-10-31 20:25 | 10m05s |      - |    - |  448k |  161G |  15M |
 +
| M 8 | Sun 2010-11-28 20:31 | 16m42s |      - |    - |  463k |  167G |  17M |
 +
| M 7 | Sun 2011-01-02 20:48 | 33m07s |      - |    - |  486k |  173G |  1.1G |
 +
| M 6 | Sun 2011-01-30 20:33 | 18m54s |      - |    - |  493k |  176G |  24M |
 +
| M 5 | Sun 2011-02-27 20:28 | 13m31s |      - |    - |  490k |  176G |  19M |
 +
| M 4 | Sun 2011-03-27 20:28 | 13m08s |      - |    - |  491k |  175G |  17M |
 +
| M 3 | Sun 2011-05-01 20:30 | 15m41s |      - |    - |  493k |  179G |  18M |
 +
| M 2 | Sun 2011-05-29 20:28 | 13m40s |      - |    - |  494k |  182G |  31M |
 +
| M 1 | Sun 2011-06-19 20:26 | 11m20s |      - |    - |  493k |  183G |  17M |
 +
| M 0 | Sun 2011-07-03 20:28 | 13m46s |      - |    - |  496k |  183G |  18M |
 +
+-----+----------------------+--------+--------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
 +
| W 3 | Sun 2011-07-10 20:28 | 13m38s |      - |    - |  479k |  180G |  16M |
 +
| W 2 | Mon 2011-07-11 20:35 | 20m27s |      - |    - |  479k |  180G |  301M |
 +
| W 1 | Fri 2011-07-15 20:30 | 15m53s |      - |    - |  480k |  180G |  62M |
 +
| W 0 | Sun 2011-07-24 19:39 |  9m25s |      - |    - |  482k |  181G |  16M |
 +
+-----+----------------------+--------+--------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
 +
| D 6 | Thu 2011-07-28 19:42 | 12m22s |      - |    - |  483k |  182G |  176M |
 +
| D 5 | Fri 2011-07-29 23:29 | 11m10s |  5h33m |  45G |  483k |  182G |  16M |
 +
| D 4 | Sat 2011-07-30 19:53 | 23m26s |  2h30m |  8.3G |  483k |  182G |  17M |
 +
| D 3 | Sun 2011-07-31 20:07 | 37m31s |  4m47s |  8.3G |  483k |  182G |  17M |
 +
| D 2 | Mon 2011-08-01 20:44 |  1h14m |  7h50m |  8.5G |  484k |  182G |  630M |
 +
| D 1 | Tue 2011-08-02 20:02 | 32m28s | 12h20m |  8.3G |  484k |  182G |  74M |
 +
| D 0 | Wed 2011-08-03 19:58 | 28m46s | 11h01m |  8.5G |  484k |  182G |  214M |
 +
+-----+----------------------+--------+--------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
 +
| S 0 | Thu 2011-08-04 20:00 | 30m28s | 11h52m |  8.5G |  484k |  182G |  203M |
 +
+-----+----------------------+--------+--------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
 +
</pre></small>
 +
 
 +
'''affa --list-archives [--csv] JOB'''
 +
With --csv, the output is in machine readable colon separated format.
 +
<small><pre>
 +
Archive:Count;Date;Files;Size;RootDirFilesystemAvail;RootDirFilesystemUsed;valid;TotalBytesReceived;ExecutionTime;DedupTotalFiles;DedupReplacedFiles;DedupSavedBytes;DedupExectime;DedupDate
 +
monthly;00000;201509270631;393237;37252509103;166889260;47876936;yes;1327370;1160638358;99;;;;;
 +
weekly;00003;201510040531;390273;37042612135;164566692;50199504;yes;1117726;45430532;59;;;;;
 +
weekly;00002;201510110531;395553;37299589800;162612204;52153992;yes;1117092;92369237;64;;;;;
 +
weekly;00001;201510180531;403831;37707599172;161855844;52910352;yes;1317083;148317764;64;;;;;
 +
weekly;00000;201510250531;406509;38146200127;161041156;53725040;yes;1104759;64083948;63;;;;;
 +
daily;00006;201510310531;415663;39248862982;162979176;51787020;yes;1958110;198060283;66;;;;;
 +
daily;00005;201511010531;411014;38563389171;163061136;51705060;yes;1156506;48903675;75;;;;;
 +
daily;00004;201511020531;408910;38612857040;162359124;52407072;yes;1007434;210812387;75;;;;;
 +
daily;00003;201511030531;410615;37815861577;162026060;52740136;yes;1524069;162697515;67;;;;;
 +
daily;00002;201511040531;414784;38131734213;161990024;52776172;yes;1571657;134250735;63;;;;;
 +
daily;00001;201511050531;420780;38433895988;161906580;52859616;yes;2021507;149388808;103;;;;;
 +
daily;00000;201511060531;425920;38677614350;161778812;52987384;yes;1987971;166510621;71;;;;;
 +
scheduled;00000;201511070531;425663;38815712018;161612600;53153596;yes;2003540;139603231;68;;;;;
 +
</pre></small>
 +
 
 +
'''affa --status [--csv]'''
 +
Displays a table of all configured jobs with enable status, time of last and next run, size of the most recent archive, exectution time of the last run and the number of scheduled (S), daily (D), weekly (W), monthly (M) and yearly (Y) archives. If last time shows 'failed', the job did not run in the last 24h. For disabled jobs 'Last' always shows 'failed' after 24 h. To see the date and time of the last run of those jobs use the --list-archives option. Column 'Next' shows the time when the next run will be started, if 'Enabled' is 'yes'. Column 'ddYld' shows the deduplication yield in bytes.
 +
 
 +
<small><pre>
 +
Affa version 3.1.0-0 on affa-2.mydomain.com
 +
+--------------+-----+-------+--------+-------+-------+-------+----------------+
 +
| Job          | ENA |  Last |  Time |  Next |  Size | ddYld | N of S,D,W,M,Y |
 +
+--------------+-----+-------+--------+-------+-------+-------+----------------+
 +
| ads-ak      | yes | 20:20 |  0m29s | 20:20 |  28M |    - |  1, 7, 2, 0, 0 |
 +
| ak-user-ma.. | yes | 22:31 |  1m51s | 22:30 |  170M |    - |  3, 7, 4, 6, 0 |
 +
| azubi-1      | yes | 03:39 |  3h24m | 00:15 |  44G |  1.2G |  1, 7, 4,10, 1 |
 +
| dcpant      | yes | 03:06 |  1m03s | 03:05 |  1.3G |    - |  1, 7, 4,10, 1 |
 +
| eshare      | yes | 21:06 | 21m01s | 20:45 |  24G |  178M |  1, 7, 4,10, 1 |
 +
| etherpad    | yes | 20:40 |  0m13s | 20:40 |  3.1M |    - |  1, 7, 4, 2, 0 |
 +
| fazubi      | yes | 08:16 | 11h16m | 21:00 |  132G |  3.3G |  1, 7, 4,10, 1 |
 +
| fschare-rh  | yes | de-duplicating (pid 9719)              |  1, 7, 4,10, 1 |
 +
| fsh-02      | yes | 07:53 | 12h23m | 19:30 |  182G |  8.5G |  1, 7, 4,10, 1 |
 +
| fshare-ak2  | yes | 00:30 |  0m26s | 00:30 |  415M |  544k |  1, 7, 4,10, 1 |
 +
| helpdesk    | yes | 21:27 |  2m16s | 21:25 |  895M |  138k |  1, 7, 4,10, 0 |
 +
| it-share    | yes | running rsync (pid 9744)              |  1, 7, 1, 0, 0 |
 +
| lightroom    | yes | waiting (pid 9528)                    |  1, 7, 4, 2, 0 |
 +
| localhost    | yes | 02:15 |  0m08s | 02:15 |  395k |    - |  1, 7, 2, 0, 0 |
 +
| mediawiki    | yes | 16:10 |  0m06s | 19:40 |  1.1G |  6.7M |  3, 7, 4,10, 1 |
 +
| mshare      | yes | 00:48 |  1h33m | 23:15 |  18G |  2.4G |  1, 7, 4,10, 1 |
 +
| wshare      | yes | 00:34 |  1h49m | 22:45 |  23G |  484M |  1, 7, 4,10, 1 |
 +
+--------------+-----+-------+--------+-------+-------+-------+----------------+
 +
2 disabled jobs not listed. Use --all to display.
 +
</pre></small>
 +
With --csv, the output is in machine readable colon separated format.
 +
 
 +
'''affa --show-config-pathes [--csv] [JOB JOB ...]'''
 +
Prints the full pathes of the file where the section of job JOB is defined.
 +
 
 +
'''affa --show-default-config'''
 +
Prints a list of all allowed property names with their default values. These values are used, when omitted in the job sections.
 +
 
 +
'''affa --show-schedule [--all]'''
 +
Prints a 'graphical' timetable for all enabled jobs. The resolution is 30 minutes. An 'S' character marks the scheduled start times. The duration of the job runs are marked with '=' characters.
 +
<small><pre>
 +
Affa version 3.1.0-0 on affa-2.mydomain.com
 +
              TIME 12:00    16:00    20:00    0:00    4:00    8:00
 +
            fsh-02 -------- -------S ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ --------
 +
            ads-ak -------- -------- S------- -------- -------- --------
 +
          etherpad -------- -------- -S------ -------- -------- --------
 +
            eshare -------- -------- -S~----- -------- -------- --------
 +
            fazubi -------- -------- --S~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~-------
 +
          helpdesk -------- -------- --S----- -------- -------- --------
 +
          it-share -------- -------- ---S=~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~- -------- busy
 +
            wshare -------- -------- -----S~~ ~~------ -------- --------
 +
ak-user-management -------- -------- -----S-- -------- -------- --------
 +
        fschare-rh -------- -------- -----S=- -------- --~----- -------- busy
 +
            mshare -------- -------- ------S= ~~------ -------- --------
 +
          azubi-1 -------- -------- -------- S=~~~~~~ -------- --------
 +
        fshare-ak2 -------- -------- -------- -S------ -------- --------
 +
        mediawiki -------- -------- -------- ---S---- -------- ----S---
 +
        localhost -------- -------- -------- ----S--- -------- --------
 +
            dcpant -------- -------- -------- ------S- -------- --------
 +
        lightroom -------- -------- -------- -------- -------- S------- busy
 +
Symbols: S=scheduled K=kill R=resume '='=rsync '~'=dedup
 +
2 disabled jobs not listed. Use --all to display.
 +
</pre></small>
  
==== Local Affa server plus a Affa server in remote location ====
+
'''affa --log-tail [JOB]'''
# Standard setup<br>...
+
Displays the tail of the logfile of job JOB with live update. This command is identical to tail -n 50 -f /path/to/logfile. Without the JOB argument the global logfile is shown.
# Chained setup<br>...
 
  
==== Backup a single ibay  ====
+
'''affa --send-status'''
 +
Sends the status table, the disk-usage and the archive list of all jobs to the email addresses configured in the [GlobalAffaConfig] section.
 +
 
 +
'''affa --disk-usage'''
 +
Shows the current disk usage of all root dir filesystems
 +
<small><pre>
 +
Affa version 3.1.0-0 on affa-2.mydomain.de
 +
+------+--------+--------+----------------------------------------------------+
 +
| Use% |  Used |  Avail | Root Dir                                          |
 +
+------+--------+--------+----------------------------------------------------+
 +
|  71% |  938GB |  365GB | /var/affa                                          |
 +
|  20% |  194GB |  759GB | /mnt/affadev                                      |
 +
+------+--------+--------+----------------------------------------------------+
 +
</pre></small>
 +
With --csv, the output is printed in a machine readable colon separated format.
 +
 
 +
'''affa --cleanup JOB'''
 +
After you have lowered a keep value, e.g. scheduledKeep, then archives with a higher indices will no longer be shifted and will exist for ever. This option finds these archives and deletes them after confirmation. When running the cleanup command on a locally attached USB drive, manually mount the USB drive BEFORE running this command. When finished, manually unmount the USB drive. This requirement may apply to some of the other commands listed here.
 +
 
 +
'''affa --rename-job JOB NEWNAME'''
 +
Renames the job JOB to NEWNAME including the section name and archive directories.
 +
 
 +
'''affa --move-archive JOB NEWROOTDIR'''
 +
Moves the archive directory of job JOB to the rootdir NEWROOTDIR and adjusts the value of property RootDir. NEWROOTDIR must be a full path starting with a slash. As moving across filesystems (e.g. from an external USB drive to the local disk) is not possible, Affa uses a copy command in this case and deletes the source directory after that. Depending on the archive size, copying across filesystems can take a long time.
 +
 
 +
'''affa --delete-job [--revoke-key] JOB'''
 +
Irreversibly deletes all archives, of job JOB and set the status property to disable. With --revoke-key option, the public key on the remote server will be deleted.
 +
 
 +
'''affa --revoke-key JOB'''
 +
Deletes the public RSA key on the remote server.
 +
 
 +
'''affa --kill JOB'''
 +
Terminates the running job JOB and all its child processes (rsync processes).
 +
 
 +
'''affa --killall'''
 +
Terminates all running jobs.
 +
 
 +
affa --mailtest JOB
 +
Sends a test email to the email addresses configured in the JOB section. Use this to verify, that your mail system is working.
 +
{{Note box|By default Affa only sends messages on errors, never on success (see property chattyOnSuccess).}}
 +
 
 +
'''affa --nrpe [JOB JOB ...]'''
 +
Checks for jobs that were not run the last NRPRtrigger hours and reports them as failed. A Nagios/ICINGA NRPE complient message is printed and exit status returned.
 +
 
 +
'''affa --version'''
 +
Displays the Affa version number and checks Samba and Freedup installation.
 +
 
 +
'''affa --warranty'''
 +
Displays the disclaimer of liability.
 +
 
 +
'''affa --license'''
 +
Displays the license Affa is released under.
 +
 
 +
'''affa --help'''
 +
Displays a short help.
 +
 
 +
'''affa --debug'''
 +
Enables verbose logging. Overrides job and global configurations.
 +
 
 +
===SME Specific usage and command line options===
 +
 
 +
These commands are implemented in a fork of Affa 3 project for use with SME. '''They are not part of the Affa 3 for CentOS project.'''
 +
 
 +
====SME server 'rise' function====
 +
 
 +
{{Note box|Before trying a rise please check /var/affa/YourServer/rpms-missing.txt
 +
 
 +
You may find there are missing rpms/contribs that template fragments depends on.
 +
 
 +
It may be necessary to install some of these rpms before a rise to prevent issues.
 +
}}
 +
 
 +
The SME server version of Affa has a unique feature restore feature enabling you to turn your Affa backup server into a replica of your server. It is an <b>extremely</b> fast way to restore your server.
 +
 
 +
'''affa --rise [--all] JOB [ARCHIVE]'''
 +
Runs a full restore on the Affa server <b>(!!!)</b> of all standard files and directories from the backup ARCHIVE of job JOB. In other words: After completion, the Affa box reboots as a clone of the source server. Ensure, that the source server has been powered off before you reboot the Affa box, otherwise the network interface will not come up. This is important, when you run --rise remotely. The --rise feature only works with SME servers and should only be used on dedicated backup servers.
 +
 
 +
With option --all, all files and directories of the archive as defined by the include[] properties are restored. Files or directories with the same name on the Affa server will be overwritten and cannot be restored by a --undo-rise. This should not be an issue on a dedicated Affa server which does not hold any other data. After a possible --undo-rise those additional restored data must be removed manually.
 +
 
 +
Please note, that the rise process backs up the the Affa server itself before doing the restore from the archive. This backup is used by a possible --undo-rise run to restore the Affa server. Only the standard files and directories are backed up. Data in non-standard locations (like /opt) are untouched and will still exist after the rise run '''if they don't get overwritten by data of the backup''' (=if the backup contains /opt too e.g.).
 +
 
 +
{{Note box|The above command is not implemented in Affa 3 for CentOS. It has been specifically added to the fork for SME.}}
 +
 
 +
'''affa --undo-rise'''
 +
This feature reverts a risen Affa box to a backup server. After a reboot, all configured jobs '''based on standard files and directories''' will work again.
 +
 
 +
{{Note box|The above command is not implemented in Affa 3 for CentOS. It has been specifically added to the fork for SME.}}
 +
 
 +
===Example setups===
 +
====Dedicated backup server====
 +
 
 +
*Setup a dedicated server and install Affa 3 for SME.
 +
*Setup a job for every server you want to backup.
 +
*Send the public keys to every server.
 +
 
 +
affa --send-key JOBNAME
 +
 
 +
*Check whether password-less logins are working.
 +
 
 +
affa --check-connections
 +
 
 +
*Check whether the scheduled jobs are evenly distributed over the day.
 +
 
 +
affa --show-schedule
 +
 
 +
*Create the cron jobs.
 +
 
 +
affa --make-cronjobs
 +
 
 +
*Check the status after 24 hours.
 +
 
 +
affa --status
 +
 
 +
====Backup of single ibays====
 
Suppose you want to backup the ibays 'staff1' and 'staff2' on your production server with WAN IP 82.123.1.1  to an Affa server in a different location over the internet every night at 2:30am.
 
Suppose you want to backup the ibays 'staff1' and 'staff2' on your production server with WAN IP 82.123.1.1  to an Affa server in a different location over the internet every night at 2:30am.
# log into the Affa server and install the packages as described above.
 
# generate the DSA keys and send the public key to the production server<br><code># affa --send-keys 82.123.1.1</code>
 
# copy the config helper script sample<br><code># cp /usr/lib/affa/jobconfig-sample.pl /root/ibay-staff-job.pl </code>
 
# edit /root/ibay-staff-job.pl and set<br><code>my $jobname='ibay-staff';</code><br>and<br><code>'remoteHostName‘=>'82.123.1.1',</code><br><code>'TimeSchedule'=>'0230',</code><br><code>'SMEServer'=>'no',</code><br><code>'Include[0]'=>'/home/e-smith/files/ibays/staff1',</code><br><code>'Include[1]'=>'/home/e-smith/files/ibays/staff2',</code>
 
# write the configuration<br><code># /root/ibay-staff-job.pl</code>
 
# check next morning<br><code># affa --status</code><br><code># ls /var/affa/ibay-staff</code>
 
  
 +
*Log into the Affa server.
 +
*Create a dedicated job file ''/etc/affa/ibay-staff.conf'' . Edit it and set
 +
 +
[ibay-staff]
 +
Description=Backup of ibay-staff on 82.123.1.1
 +
remoteHostName=82.123.1.1
 +
TimeSchedule=0230
 +
SMEServer=no
 +
Include=/home/e-smith/files/ibays/staff1
 +
Include=/home/e-smith/files/ibays/staff2
 +
 +
*Save the configuration
 +
*send the public key to the production server
 +
 +
affa --send-key ibay-staff
 +
 +
*check next morning
 +
 +
affa --list-archives ibay-staff
 +
affa --status
 +
ls /var/affa/ibay-staff
 +
 +
====Two production servers backup each other====
 +
You have two sites connnected via a VPN and a SME Server running on each site. In that case you don't need a dedicated Affa backup server. Both production servers can additionally act as Affa backup servers backing up the server of the other site. Simply install Affa and configure a job that backs up the other one. You can use all Affa features except of the rise feature.
 +
 +
When using the rise feature, the server becomes any of the backed up systems, which is less useful in this scenario as it would give you a running copy of the server of the other site while the server of this site is down.
 +
 +
To get redundancy and a faster restore you can configure a local backup to an external USB or NAS device.
 +
 +
Please pay attention, that you do not backup the archives back to the other site. Set the RootDir property to a path which is not included in the SME default backup list. When leaving the RootDir property to its default '/var/affa', this is guaranteed.
 +
 +
====Use Affa to backup to a NFS-mounted NAS or a local attached USB drive====
 +
 +
{{Note box|This chapter still needs to be checked whether it works with Affa 3 for SME.}}
 +
 +
You want to backup your SME production server with hostname 'prodbox‘ and IP 10.200.48.1 on a mounted filesystem instead of setting up a dedicated Affa box.
  
==== Two production servers backup each other ====
+
=====Setup NAS=====
...
+
You have a [http://www.freenas.org FreeNAS] box with IP 10.200.48.2 up and running with NFS service enabled. The disk is mounted to /mnt/affashare. You have authorized the IP address of your prodbox server to access share /mnt/affashare.
==== Moving a  SME 7 server installation to a new hardware using Affa with rise feature ====
 
...
 
  
==== Use Affa to backup to a NFS-mounted NAS or a local attached USB drive ====
+
*log into the 'prodbox' and install the NFS packages
  
You want to backup your SME 7 production server with hostname 'prodbox‘ and IP 10.200.48.1 on a mounted filesystem instead of setting up a dedicated Affa box.
+
/usr/bin/yum install --enablerepo=smecontribs smeserver-nfs
  
===== Setup NAS =====
+
*now enable and start the portmapper service
You have a [http://www.freenas.org FreeNAS] box with IP 10.200.48.2 up and running with NFS service enabled for your network 10.200.48.0/22. The RAID array is mounted to /mnt/affashare.
 
# log into the 'prodbox' and install the NFS packages<br><code>yum  --enablerepo=base install nfs-utils</code><br>You don't need to signal post-upgrade or reboot event.
 
# mount the NFS share<br><code>mkdir -p /mnt/affadevice</code><br><code>mount 10.200.48.2:/mnt/affashare /mnt/affadevice</code>
 
  
===== Alternatively setup a USB drive =====
+
config setprop portmap status enabled
# log into the 'prodbox'
+
service portmap start
# Connect a USB hard disk to the USB Bus. Now you must determine what device the kernel has assigned to the drive. View the /var/log/message and search for ''Initializing USB Mass Storage driver''. A few lines below you'll find the name of the device. In this example it is ''sdc''. Replace ''/dev/sdc'' by ''your device'' in following instructions.
 
# Use the fdisk program to create a linux partition<br><code># fdisk /dev/sdc</code><br>You'll most likely find an existing vfat dos partition, which you have to delete first. In the following we assume, that you have created a single partition ''/dev/sdc1''.
 
# Now format the drive with an ext3 filesystem<br><code>mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdc1</code>
 
# Make the mount point<br><code># mkdir -p /mnt/affadevice</code>
 
# Add the following line to the /etc/fstab<br><code>/dev/sdc1 /mnt/affadevice ext3 defaults</code>
 
# Mount the drive<br><code>mount /mnt/affadevice</code>
 
# Crosscheck your work using the df command<br><code># df</code>
 
  
===== Setup Affa =====
+
*mount the NFS share
You want to run backups on 11:30 h, 15:30 h and 19:30 h and you want to keep the last 3 scheduled backups, 7 daily, 5 weekly, 12 monthly and 1 yearly backups.
 
# log into the 'prodbox' and install the Affa packages as described above.
 
# copy the config helper script sample<br><code># cp /usr/lib/affa/jobconfig-sample.pl /root/prodbox-job.pl </code>
 
# edit /root/prodbox-job.pl and set<br><code>my $jobname='prodbox';</code><br>and<br><code>'remoteHostName‘=>'localhost',</code><br><code>'TimeSchedule'=>'1130,1530,1930',</code><br><code>'scheduledKeep'=>3,</code><br><code>'dailyKeep'=>7,</code><br><code>'weeklyKeep'=>5,</code><br><code>'monthlyKeep'=>12,</code><br><code>'yearlyKeep'=>1,</code><br><code>'RootDir=>'/mnt/affadevice',</code><br>Review the other properties and change them to your needs.
 
# write the configuration<br><code># /root/prodbox-job.pl</code>
 
# run the job manually<br><code># affa --backup prodbox</code>
 
  
===== Limitations =====
+
mkdir -p /mnt/affadevice
Whith this kind of setup you cannot use the affa rise feature, as it requires the backup archive to be located on the same fileystem as the server installation. The rise option uses hardlinks, which are not working across filesystems.
+
mount 10.200.48.2:/mnt/affashare /mnt/affadevice
  
=== Restore ===
 
==== Restore a single files or directory ====
 
...
 
==== Full restore ====
 
To run a full restore of user and configuration data run on the Affa server<br><code># affa --full-restore <JOB> [<ARCHIVE>]</code><br>
 
  
Example:<br>
+
=====Alternatively setup a USB drive=====
You have backuped your production server 'prodsrv' as job 'myprodsrv'. To restore from the latest backup run<br><code># affa --full-restore myprodsrv</code>
 
  
To restore from the older archive daily.2 run<br><code># affa --full-restore myprodsrv daily.2</code><br>
+
*log into the 'prodbox'
 +
*connect a USB hard disk to the USB Bus. Now you must determine what device the kernel has assigned to the drive. View the /var/log/message and search for ''Initializing USB Mass Storage driver''. A few lines below you'll find the name of the device. In this example it is ''sdh''. Replace ''/dev/sdh'' by ''your device'' in following instructions.
 +
*use the fdisk program to create a linux partition. '''Verify that this is really the attached USB drive before you continue!'''
  
'''Important note:''' A full restore reconstruct the server as it was at the time of the backup. That means, files created or server configuration changes after the backup run will be lost.
+
fdisk /dev/sdh
 +
You'll most likely find an existing vfat dos partition, which you have to delete first. In the following we assume, that you have created a single partition ''/dev/sdh1''.
  
=== Files ===
+
*now format the drive with an ext3 filesystem
/sbin/e-smith/affa<br>
 
/etc/cron.d/affa-status<br>
 
/etc/cron.d/affa<br>
 
/etc/logrotate.d/affa<br>
 
/usr/lib/affa/jobconfig-sample.pl<br>
 
/usr/lib/affa/postJobCommand-sample.pl<br>
 
/usr/lib/affa/preJobCommand-sample.pl<br>
 
  
 +
mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdh1
  
 +
*make the mount point
  
 +
mkdir -p /mnt/affadevice
  
=== Additional information ===
+
*add the following line to the /etc/fstab
==== Performance ====
 
  
It is hardly to predict how much time a backup job needs to complete. It depends on the number of files, the total file size, the file changes since last run, the network speed and not least on the CPU power, disk speed and RAM of the source and backup server. The following table of measured values will give you an idea of what you can expect.
+
/dev/sdh1 /mnt/affadevice ext3 defaults
     
+
 
{|  border="1" cellpadding="3"
+
*mount the drive
|-
+
 
| '''Backup server''' || '''Source server''' || '''Data on source server''' || '''Transferred Data''' || '''Connection''' || '''Compression''' || '''Affa run time'''
+
mount /mnt/affadevice
|-
+
 
| 2x3.2GHz Xeon<br>2 GB RAM, 1.5 TB RAID6
+
*crosscheck your work using the df command
| 2x3.2GHz Dual Core Xeon<br>4 GB RAM, RAID5, SME 7.1<br>Intranet Web Server + MySQL|| 1.4 GB, 12,000 files|| 300 MB, 16 files || Internet 2 Mbit || yes || 2 minutes
+
 
|-
+
df
| 2x3.2GHz Xeon<br>2 GB RAM, 1.5 TB RAID6
+
 
| 2x3.2GHz Dual Core Xeon<br>4 GB RAM, RAID5<br>SME 7.1 Mailserver || 43 GB, 410,000 files || 140 MB, 2,700 files || Internet 2 Mbit|| yes || 10 minutes
+
=====Setup Affa=====
|-
+
You want to run backups at 11:30 h, 15:30 h and 19:30 h and you want to keep the last 3 scheduled backups, 7 daily, 5 weekly, 12 monthly and 1 yearly backups.
| 2x2GHz Dual Core Xeon 5130<br>6 GB RAM, 1 TB RAID 5
+
 
| 2x2GHz Dual Core Xeon 5130<br>6 GB RAM, 1 TB RAID 5<br>SME 7.1 File- and Mailserver || 125 GB, 98,000 files || 3,2 GB, 3,000 files || Gbit LAN || no || 25 minutes
+
*log into the 'prodbox' and install the Affa packages as described above.
|-
+
*create/edit the conf file of the job: nano /etc/affa/prodbox.conf
| 2x2GHz Dual Core Xeon 5130<br>6 GB RAM, 874 GB RAID 5
+
 
| 2x2GHz Dual Core Xeon 5130<br>6 GB RAM, 1 TB RAID 5<br>SME 7.1 File- and Mailserver || 125 GB, 98,000 files || 3.5 GB, 2000 files || Internet 2 Mbit || yes || 17 minutes
+
and set:
|-
+
[prodbox]
| 2x800MHz Pentium 3<br>1 GB RAM, 300 GB RAID1
+
remoteHostName=localhost
| 2x2.8GHz Xeon,<br> 1GB RAM, 140 GB RAID5<br>SME 7.1 File- and Mailserver || 39 GB, 370,000 files || 12 GB, 4,000 files || 100Mbit LAN || no || 52 minutes
+
TimeSchedule=1130
|}
+
TimeSchedule=1530
 +
TimeSchedule=1930
 +
scheduledKeep=3
 +
dailyKeep=7
 +
weeklyKeep=5
 +
monthlyKeep=12
 +
yearlyKeep=1
 +
RootDir=/mnt/affadevice
 +
Review the other properties and change them to your needs.
 +
 
 +
*run the job manually
 +
 
 +
affa --run prodbox
 +
 
 +
=====Limitations=====
 +
With this kind of setup you cannot use the affa rise feature, as it requires the backup archive to be located on the '''same fileystem''' as the server installation. The rise option uses hardlinks, which are not working across filesystems.
 +
 
 +
=====Automount=====
 +
Having the backup archives in the same filesystem is always a risk, which can be minimized by using the automount feature. Then the external filesystem is only mounted during a job run.
 +
 
 +
In the NAS example set
 +
AutomountDevice=10.200.48.2:/mnt/affashare
 +
AutomountPoint=/mnt/affadevice
 +
and skip the step 2.
 +
 
 +
In the USB drive example set
 +
AutomountDevice=/dev/sdc1
 +
AutomountPoint=/mnt/affadevice
 +
and skip the steps 5 to 8.
 +
 
 +
The mount point will be automatically created, if it does not exist. <br>
 +
To access the archive directory, you need to mount it manually.
 +
 
 +
====Copying a AFFA USB hard drive archive to a new disk====
 +
Affa uses copious amounts of hard links to compress and preserve disk space for its backups. If you are in the situation where you want to copy such a disk archive to a new (bigger) disk, you need to ensure that the hard  links are copied correctly or the destination copy may became significantly bigger than the total of the source archive.
 +
 
 +
One way to copy across file systems (i.e. two different USB disks) and preserve the hard links is as follows:
 +
 
 +
*mount both USB drives but with different mount points. e.g. /media/backup1 & /media/backup2 and then:
 +
 
 +
mkdir /media/backup2/archive
 +
cd /media/backup1/archive
 +
tar cpf - . | ( cd /media/backup2/archive && tar xpf - )
 +
 
 +
where '''archive''' is the name of the AFFA job you want to move to the other disk.
 +
 
 +
===Restore===
 +
====Restore single files or directories====
 +
 
 +
'''Example 1:''' It's Tuesday January 6th 2009, when user 'briedlin' asks you to restore the messages of his mailbox 'orders' he has accidentally deleted on Monday.
 +
 
 +
*You first must check what backup archives are available. The jobname of this server backup is 'primmail'. To get a listing of all archives run
 +
 
 +
affa --list-archives primmail
 +
''(see the example listing in chapter [[Affa#Usage_and_command_line_options]]''
 +
 
 +
*Choose the daily.0 archive, which was created Monday night. Now restore the mailbox 'orders' using the rsync command.
 +
*Now run the rsync command ''(note the trailing slash!)'' on the Affa backup server:
 +
 
 +
export RDIR=/home/e-smith/files/users/briedlin/Maildir/.orders/  ''# this variable is used to shorten the next command line''
 +
rsync -av /var/affa/primmail/daily.0/$RDIR 10.204.48.1:$RDIR
 +
 
 +
If the servers are configured to use a different ssh port eg 2222, then instead do:
 +
 
 +
export RDIR=/home/e-smith/files/users/briedlin/Maildir/.orders/  ''# this variable is used to shorten the next command line''
 +
rsync -av -e 'ssh -i /root/.ssh/id_rsa_affa -p 2222' /var/affa/primmail/daily.0/$RDIR 10.204.48.1:$RDIR
 +
 
 +
 
 +
 
 +
'''Example 2:''' A user has deleted the file orderform.pdf from ibay 'docs' on the server 10.204.48.1 and asks you to restore it.
 +
 
 +
*You have searched and found the latest version of this file in weekly archive of job 'prodserv'.
 +
*To copy it back to the server 10.204.48.1 run on the Affa server
 +
 
 +
export RFILE=/home/e-smith/files/ibays/docs/files/orderform.pdf  ''# this variable is used to shorten the next command line''
 +
rsync -av /var/affa/prodserv/weekly.1/$RFILE 10.204.48.1:$RFILE
 +
 
 +
*If the servers are configured to use a different ssh port eg 2222, then instead do:
 +
 
 +
export RFILE=/home/e-smith/files/ibays/docs/files/orderform.pdf  ''# this variable is used to shorten the next command line''
 +
rsync -av -e 'ssh -i /root/.ssh/id_rsa_affa -p 2222' /var/affa/prodserv/weekly.1/$RFILE 10.204.48.1:$RFILE
 +
 
 +
 
 +
 
 +
'''Example 3:''' Restoring a file with special characters in the path
 +
 
 +
Do not use shell variables to shorten the command. It would complicate things more than it would help.
 +
Quote the source and destination path. In the destination path escape blank characters with a double backslash and brackets with a single backslash. On the Affa backup server do:
 +
rsync -av "/var/affa/fileshare/daily.4/home/e-smith/files/ibays/mechfiles/files/Valve Control (Design Gr)/VALVE LIST FOR ISSUED.xls" "192.168.1.7:/home/e-smith/files/ibays/mechfiles/files/Valve\\ Control\\ \(Design\\ Gr\)/VALVE\\ LIST\\ FOR\\ ISSUED.xls"
 +
 
 +
If the servers are configured to use a different ssh port eg 2222, then instead do:
 +
 
 +
rsync -av -e 'ssh -i /root/.ssh/id_rsa_affa -p 2222' "/var/affa/fileshare/daily.4/home/e-smith/files/ibays/mechfiles/files/Valve Control (Design Gr)/VALVE LIST FOR ISSUED.xls" "192.168.1.7:/home/e-smith/files/ibays/mechfiles/files/Valve\\ Control\\ \(Design\\ Gr\)/VALVE\\ LIST\\ FOR\\ ISSUED.xls"
 +
 
 +
====Full restore====
 +
 
 +
{{Note box|Please for notes about rpms-missing.txt above: https://wiki.contribs.org/Affa#SME_Specific_usage_and_command_line_options}}
 +
 
 +
Generally:
 +
  '''affa --full-restore [optional settings] JOB [ARCHIVE]'''
 +
This rsyncs the data (files and directories )from the backup ARCHIVE back to the 'remoteHostname' defined in the configuration of the job JOB.
 +
If ARCHIVE is not given, the archive 'scheduled.0' is used as the default.
 +
The --full-restore reconstructs the server as it was at the time of the backup and takes following IMPORTANT optional settings in consideration:
 +
 
 +
With option [--preserve-newer=yes] files on the remote server with modification time newer than on the backup are not overwritten.
 +
 
 +
With option [--delete=yes] all files on the remote server, which are not in the backup, are deleted.
 +
 
 +
If the parameter “SMEServer=yes” is set, the signal-event pre-restore and signal-event post-upgrade will be used automatically.
 +
 
 +
After the restore is done, the restored server reboots automatically.
 +
 
 +
Example:
 +
You have backuped your production server 'prodsrv' as job 'prodbox'. To restore only lost data from the latest backup run
 +
  affa --full-restore prodbox
 +
 
 +
To restore exactly from the older archive daily.3 run
 +
affa --full-restore [--preserve-newer=no] [--delete=yes]  prodbox daily.3
 +
 
 +
{{Warning box|A full restore with --preserve-newer no and --delete yes reconstructs the server as it was at the time of the backup. That means, that all files created or server configuration changes made after the backup will be lost! }}
 +
 
 +
====Moving a SME server installation to new hardware using the Affa rise feature or the backup-restore functions====
 +
Please see this Howto: [[Moving SME to new Hardware]]
 +
 
 +
====Restore from USB drive on new server====
  
'''Note:''' The last action of a job run is to remove the oldest backup, e.g. if archive scheduled.11 exists and you have set the scheduledKeep property to 12, then it must be deleted. This can take a significant long time, which increases the total job execution time.
+
This tip comes from http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=42412.0
  
=== Changelog ===
+
Q) I have complete backups using affa stored on a usb hard drive connected to our affa backup server. I need to restore an earlier monthly backup of our job "mailbackup" to a test server rather than back to the original system.  If I did it from the backup server I see the instructions of how to rise that server to the current backup on that server but I want to restore a point about a month ago before some strange things happened. And I want to do it on a machine that is not our backup server or our production server. I tried to figure out how but am lost in the options. My goal is to do some testing.
<pre>
 
* Fri Apr 27 2007 Michael Weinberger
 
  
- Version 0.1.2
+
A) On your testserver setup a job "mailbackup" identical to that on your backup server (a copy of the conf file is available into the folder of the archive, as an hidden file ''.mailbackup-setup.ini'') but set property '''RootDir''' to /var/affa and property '''status''' to disabled. Connect the USB drive and copy the archive of the job mailbackup to /var/affa. Then run affa --rise mailbackup ARCHIVE
  Bugfix: Preserve of ethernet driver setting with --rise did not work.
 
  Also preserve NIC bonding.
 
  
 +
===FAQ===
 +
'''What files and directories are included by default?'''
  
* Mon Apr 23 2007 Michael Weinberger
+
With SMEServer=no nothing at all.
  
- Version 0.1.1
+
With SMEServer=yes the SME default backup list is the output of following command:
  scheduledKeep must be>=2 for --link-dest
+
perl -e 'use esmith::Backup;$b=new esmith::Backup;print join("\n",$b->restore_list)."\n"'
  set scheduledKeep to 2 if <2
+
and as additional folder:
- get lastrun date from affa-report rather than from report file
+
/etc/affa
- added auto mount function
 
- added AutomountDevice and AutomountPoint to jobconfig-sample.pl
 
  
* Wed Apr 18 2007 Michael Weinberger
+
{{Note box|The following example needs to be reworked for Affa 3.}}
 +
'''Can I exclusively backup image files from a specific directory?'''
 +
Yes. Assuming you want to backup all gif and jpg files from directory /home/e-smith/files/ibays/pictures/files use this configuration
 +
db affa setprop JOBNAME SMEServer no          # do not include SME Server default directories and files
 +
db affa setprop JOBNAME Include[0] '/home/e-smith/files/ibays/pictures/files' # start searching here
 +
db affa setprop JOBNAME Include[1] '*/'        # search the tree recursively
 +
db affa setprop JOBNAME Include[2] '*.gif'    # copy files that match these patterns
 +
db affa setprop JOBNAME Include[3] '*.jpg' 
 +
db affa setprop JOBNAME Exclude[0] '*'        # exclude all others
 +
db affa setprop JOBNAME rsyncOptions '-m'      # do not create empty folders
  
- Version 0.0.8
 
  dont die if report db does not exist
 
  
* Wed Apr 18 2007 Michael Weinberger
+
'''How can I move a backup archive from my production server in a remote branch office to the Affa server using an USB disk? I want to avoid to download the first full backup over the internet.'''
 +
Install Affa on your production server, connect and mount the USB disk. Setup a job to write the archive to the USB disk. After the job run, connect the USB disk to your Affa server and setup the job in the same way. Use the setup script from the archive directory. You only need to change the remoteHostName property. Now use the --move-archive option to move the archive to the local disk. If not already done, send the public key to your production server. You're done.
  
- Version 0.0.7
 
  run checkConnection() only for scheduled backups
 
  added Size and Disk usage information to --status
 
  
* Sun Apr 15 2007 Michael Weinberger
+
'''How do I backup two SME servers behind a firewall?'''
 +
First you need to configure port forwardings for the ssh service on your firewall. Use a non-standard port, e.g 2200->22, for your second server. Setup a job on your Affa server for each of your production servers. Set up the job property sshPort=2200 for second server.
  
- Version 0.0.6
+
===Uninstall===
  added --full-restore
+
This removes the installed Affa package, all configuration data and all backup archives.
  missing check for HOSTNAME argument in --send-keys added
 
  
* Thu Apr 12 2007 Michael Weinberger
+
Run the following commands for each job:
 +
affa --revoke-key JOBNAME
 +
affa --delete-job JOBNAME
 +
Verify that all jobs have been deleted:
 +
affa --status
 +
Remove the Affa package:
 +
yum remove smeserver-affa-3.2.2.1-0.noarch.rpm
 +
Cleaning up:
 +
rm -f /etc/cron.d/affa
 +
rm -rf /etc/affa
 +
rm -rf /var/affa /var/log/affa
  
- Version 0.0.5
+
===Troubleshooting===
  fixed calculation of lastrun-now
+
====Affa stops working after prodserver was rebuild.====
 +
'''Description:'''
  
* Thu Apr 12 2007 Michael Weinberger
+
*Affa stopped working or is broken.
 +
*When affaserver tries to make an ssh connection to prodserver it fails.
 +
*In the /var/log/affa/''jobname''.log file you will this message: "SSH connection to ''prodserver ip'' failed. Did you send the public key".
 +
*Resending the keys does not solve the problem.
  
- Version 0.0.4
+
'''Solution:'''
- added --send-status plus templates
 
- fixed format error of times in affa --status
 
- show 'failed', if lastrun is older 1 day in affa --status
 
- fixed typo. default status=disabled (was disable)
 
  
* Fri Apr 06 2007 Michael Weinberger
+
*This is probably due to the key for prodserver that is stored on the affaserver no longer matches the key of prodserver.
 +
*You need remove the existing key so that the next ssh connection re-gets the keys from prodserver.
 +
*From the command line edit the /root/.ssh/known_hosts file and remove the line for prodserver. It starts with: ''prodserver ip'' ssh-rsa
  
- Version 0.0.3
+
===Bug report===
- watchdog reminder was not deleted on soure
+
Affa is listed in the [http://bugs.contribs.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=SME%20Contribs&component=smeserver-affa bugtracker contribs section].
- wrong version mismatch list in  rpm compare
+
Please report all bugs, new feature requests and documentation issues there.
  
* Thu Apr 05 2007 Michael Weinberger
 
  
- added 'rsync--inplace' property
+
{{#bugzilla:columns=id,product,version,status,summary |sort=id |order=desc |disablecache=1|component=smeserver-affa|noresultsmessage="No open bugs found."}}
  
* Mon Apr 02 2007 Michael Weinberger
+
===Additional information===
 +
For details of performance, changelog etc see [[:Affa:Additional information]]
  
- initial release
+
===References===
</pre>
 
  
=== Source RPM ===
+
*Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rsync
[http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/contribs/michaelw/sme7/Src/ Affa SRPM]
+
*Rsync homepage http://rsync.samba.org/
 +
*Wiki article [[Moving SME to new Hardware]]
 +
*Wiki article [[Backup with Affa and FreeDup]]
 +
*Wiki article [[Rsyncd setup on a windows computer for use with Affa backup]]
 +
*Wiki article [[Backup Windows Computers Using Affa]]
 +
*Wiki article [[Backup of ESXi Virtual Machines using Affa]]
  
=== Acronym ===
+
----
Affa stands for '''A'''utomatische '''F'''estplatten '''F'''ern'''a'''rchivierung
 
 
[[Category: Contrib]]
 
[[Category: Contrib]]
----
+
[[Category: Backup]]

Latest revision as of 17:25, 11 September 2022



Warning.png Warning:
1st Sept 2022 A recent fix to rsync rsync-3.1.2-11.el7_9.x86_64 causes Affa to silently fail. See below.



PythonIcon.png Skill level: Advanced
The instructions on this page may require deviations from standard procedures. A good understanding of linux and Koozali SME Server is recommended.


Warning

Warning.png Warning:
rsync-3.1.2-11.el7_9.x86_64 causes Affa to silently fail.


You can see the failure in your logs but nothing beyond that. No files will be backed up after you have installed this update to rsync.

See the link to Bug 12165 below.

The only current fix is to downgrade rsync on the Affa server. It does not matter on the Target server.

We are working on a solution and have test code running and will push a fix as soon as we can.

Do please contact us on the bug if you want to help test. A fix will be available faster if you do.

Is this article helpful to you?
Please consider donating or volunteering
Thank you!

Maintainer

Maintainers(s) Affa3: Arnaud, stephdl (and please see above note.)
Copyright (C) 2004-2012 by Michael Weinberger

Version

Devel 10:
Contrib 10:
Contrib 9:
smeserver-affa
The latest version of smeserver-affa is available in the SME repository, click on the version number(s) for more information.


Description

The main purpose of this affa package is to make a SME Server a dedicated backup box in a few minutes. Affa backs up as many SME servers as you like or any other servers which have sshd running and rsync installed. Once it is configured, Affa runs reliably unattended and sends warning messages in case of any errors.

All backup archives are full backups, as Affa makes use of the hardlink technique. Therefore a new full backup only needs disk space for the differences plus the filesystem overhead for the hardlinks and directories (which is typically 2-3%).

Affa is based on the rsync program and supports the rsync --compress option. This allows you to run backups over the internet or VPN. A typical setup is one or more Affa backup servers placed in different locations, which backup the production server(s) over the VPN.

A special feature is the rise option, which allows you to rise the backup server to your production server from a backup archive in case of a dead loss of your production server. The rise is executed within a extremely short time, even with huge amount of data. The rise feature uses hardlinks and therefore does not use up additional disk space.

The rise feature can also be used to upgrade from a lower version to a higher version of SME. This also work from SME 8.1 to 9. For this to work you need 2 separate installations of SME. One is the actual running server and the other is an affa backup server with a newer version of SME Server where you execute the rise command. See more here: Moving SME to new Hardware

A simple way to have a server running with maximum up time is to duplicate the hardware. E.g. to have 2 separate hardware boxes or virtual servers on separate hardware. One is the actual server and the other one is a backup system that in a very short time in case of problems can be upgraded to the actual server with the rise command. This also allow you to upgrade the SME Server software with minimum down time!

Affa is a command line tool for system administrators and is intentionally designed without a GUI. Therefore it can be efficiently managed on the console and over slow internet connections.

Note: This document also refers to the Affa Version 2 which is not maintained anymore. Information on Affa 3 will be gradually added here once it has been more tested.

Affa features at a glance

  • Affa is secure: All transfers and connections are made by using the ssh protocol with public/private key authentication
  • Periodically runs unattended full backups. Only differences to the previous full backup are transferred over the network
  • Using rsync with optional bandwidth limit and compression allows backups over the internet
  • Uses hardlink technique, i.e. physical disk space only needed for the differences between two full backups
  • Keeps a configurable number of scheduled, daily, weekly, monthly and yearly full backup archives
  • The archives are browseable. No need to unpack them first.
  • Archives can be mapped to a Samba share.
  • Backup jobs are started by the cron daemon
  • Interrupted jobs continuing with already transfered data when restarted
  • Backups the default e-smith directories and files, when property SMEServer is set to yes
  • Additional directories and files can be included
  • Directories and files can be excluded from the backup
  • Non-SME server linux systems can be backed up by setting the SMEServer property to no and using an include list
  • In ESXi mode, running virtual machines can be backed up. See Backup of ESXi Virtual Machines using Affa
  • Configurable nice level for rsync processes on the backup and source server
  • Optional run of custom programs before and after a job run (e.g. running tape backup)
  • Checks the disk space left after a job run with warning levels strict, normal or risky
  • Extensive checking of failure conditions
  • Sends failure messages to a configurable list of email addresses
  • Sends a warning message, if the backup server runs out of disk space
  • Installs an optional watchdog on the source server in case the backupserver fails (SME Server only)
  • Watchdog sends warning, if an expected backup did not run (SME Server only)
  • Watchdog sends a daily reminder message, if the error continues unchecked (SME Server only)
  • Option to display current status of all jobs showing times of last and next run, size and disk usage
  • Status can be mailed on a daily, weekly or monthly schedule
  • Option to display all existing archives of a job shown date, number of files, size and bytes tranferred from the source
  • Option to send (and revoke) the public key to the source server (SME Server and ESXi only)
  • Option to rise the backup server to a production server from a backup (SME Server only)
  • The rise feature does not physically move data and therefore is extremly fast and needs (almost) no extra disk space
  • Rise option can be run remotely as the NIC driver configuration of the backup server are preserved
  • Compares installed RPMs on source with backup server. Sends warning message, if not in sync
  • Undo rise option to restore the backup server
  • Configurable via a e-smith style db, with one record for each job and a default record for all jobs
  • Logs to /var/log/affa/JOB.log and /var/log/affa/affa.log with optional debug switch for higher verbosity
  • Log files are rotated weekly, with 5 logs kept
Warning.png Warning:
SME v7/8/9 are no longer supported.

Installation of Affa 3

The following instructions assume that a fresh Affa 3 installation is made on a fresh dedicated SME server which serves as a dedicated backup server ('affabox‘). No jobs are migrated from Affa 2. For using an existing SME server, just skip the instructions how to setup a fresh SME box.

Setup a dedicated machine with SME 8.1 or SME 9.0 from CDROM. Use the following example settings:

  1. Domain name: athome.xx (use your existing domain name)
  2. Host name: affabox (must not match to existing host)
  3. IP address: 192.168.0.10 (must not match to existing IP address)
  4. Subnet: 255.255.255.0
  5. role: Server only
  6. Gateway: 192.168.0.1 (use your existing gateway)
  7. DHCP: DEactivate
  8. DNS server: 192.168.0.1 (use your existing DNS server)
  9. activate changes: yes
  10. The fresh server will then restart with the above settings.

To update your server, login as user root on local console. Use 'top' command to display running jobs. Wait until 'yum' stopped running.

yum clean all
yum update

The fresh server will be updated.

signal-event post-upgrade
signal-event reboot

The server will reboot. Afterwards it is ready for installation of Affa 3.

Login as root on local or remote SSH console of affabox.



For SME10

There is a new version 3.3.1

However. Affa is a very complicated piece of work with a huge number of options and many have probably not been sufficiently tested depite requests for testing and feedback. Most of the major components should work but there may well be a plethora of edge cases that fail.


Warning.png Warning:
Do not rely on this as your sole backup. Make sure you have another type of backup as well



Warning.png Warning:
Do not use ANY Koozali SME v9 affa versions with v10. It will probably break both your backups and your new server


We have done very minimal testing on migration from v9 to v10.

See https://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11024


Under normal circumstances you would execute this to install :

yum install smeserver-extrarepositories-epel smeserver-extrarepositories-openfusion
signal-event yum-modify
config set UnsavedChanges no
yum install --enablerepo=smecontribs,epel,openfusion smeserver-affa

During development install can be executed with:

yum install --enablerepo=smedev,epel,openfusion smeserver-affa


Please post bug reports in the bug tracker

The server again needs to be updated.

signal-event post-upgrade
signal-event reboot

The server will reboot. Afterwards Affa 3 is ready for use.


Warning.png Warning:
Note that on SME10, a SSH AutoBlock feature interferes with the Affa requirement for regular SSH logins! You might have to disable this feature, aor increase the MaxAuthtries to allow Affa to operate correctly.


Creation of backup jobs

Job configurations of Affa 3 are no longer stored in an e-smith style database. They are stored in configuration files located in /etc/affa . Create your configuration files in this directory, e.g.

touch /etc/affa/backup-smeserver.conf

where backup-smeserver is your jobname, and add content as described below.

Quick start example

You have a SME production server with hostname 'smeserver‘ and IP 192.168.0.2.
You have a second SME box as your backup server with hostname 'affabox‘ and IP 192.168.0.10.

Login to your 'affabox' as root and edit /etc/affa/backup-smeserver.conf . Using e.g. editor nano, create the following example job configuration file for jobname backup-smeserver :

[backup-smeserver]
remoteHostName=192.168.0.2
SMEServer=yes
Watchdog=yes
RPMCheck=yes
ConnectionCheckTimeout=120
Debug=no
Description=Backup of 192.168.0.2 smeserver.athome.xx
DiskSpaceWarn=strict
RootDir=/var/affa
TimeSchedule=0630
localNice=15
remoteNice=15
rsync--inplace=yes
rsyncCompress=no
rsyncTimeout=900
scheduledKeep=1
dailyKeep=7
weeklyKeep=4
monthlyKeep=12
yearlyKeep=1
status=enabled

If you have a Letsencrypt certificate on the production server, then you should also include

Include=/etc/dehydrated

Then save your job configuration file.

Now check that your configuration is OK:

affa --configcheck

This should throw out no errors. Now create / send key files to your productive smeserver:

affa --send-key backup-smeserver

The following output should appear on the console:

Job sme-backup: Generating RSA keys...
Successfully created RSA key pair.
root@192.168.0.2's password: <Enter password of 192.168.0.2/smeserver and hit ENTER>
Public key sent to 192.168.0.2

Now run your job manually, both for test purposes, as well as to create RSA keys:

affa --run backup-smeserver

The following output should appear on the console:

The authenticity of host 'backup-smeserver (192.168.0.2)' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is 3b..........65.
Are you sure you want ton continue connecting (yes/no)? <yes>

Now your backup job should run for the first time. Depending on the volume of the files, this takes quite a while.

Once the job is done, check that the archive is available:

affa –-list-archives

or run the job a second time:

affa --run backup-smeserver

Note that you won't be asked for the password again. Note as well, that this second run of the job backup-smeserver should run considerably faster, because not all files are copied again: just the difference to the previous run is backed up, the rest is stored as hard links to the existing file copies.

Check that the second archive is available too:

affa --list-archives

From here you are able to work as with Affa 2. Modify your config file as required and described below. Automate the backup using the command affa --make-cronjobs, see below.

Job configuration properties

Note 1: The default values shown in this table are the Affa program defaults and not to be confused with the preset values in the job configuration files, e.g. backup-smeserver.conf.

Note 2: The complete documentation of the settings of Affa3 is available in [1] . It should be taken in consideration!

Note 3: Affa 3 for SME is a fork of Affa 3 for CentOS. It adds a few options back again which have been removed. Generally the configuration properties as described here do apply. Arnaud added the following functions for SME:

  • The parameter “SMEServer”
  • The parameter and function “Watchdog”
  • The parameter and function “RPMCheck”
  • The functions “--rise” and “--undo-rise”

Consequently the list below should reproduce the list for the unforked Affa 3 version, plus adding the properties above. For details refer to Arnaud's website.

Property Value Multivalue Default Description
remoteHostName FQHN or IP no <none> FQHN or IP of the source host (mandatory)
remoteUser account no root The user account to be used with all ssh logins. May be case sensitive, e.g. Administrator account on Windows
Description text string no <none> Any text that describes the job
TimeSchedule HHMM yes 2230 The time the job will run. Use exactly 4 digits, no colon, no point. Important: Using the proper format HHMM is essential. Badly formatted TimeSchedule will cause strange Perl errors. Multiple times can be achieved by repeating the line, each line with a different time.
status enabled or disabled no enabled When set to disabled, no cron entries will made. You can still run a job manually.
Include full path yes <none> File(s) or directory(s) to be included in the backup.
Exclude full path yes <none> File(s) or directory(s) to be excluded from the backup.
RootDir full path no /var/affa where to store the backup archives. Do not use /home/e-smith or /root as these are included in the backup and therefore the rise option will not work! Recommended: /var/affa
scheduledKeep integer >= 1 no 1 how many of the scheduled backups to be kept
dailyKeep integer >= 0 no 7 how many of the daily backups to be kept
weeklyKeep integer >= 0 no 4 how many of the weekly backups to be kept
monthlyKeep integer >= 0 no 12 how many of the monthly backups to be kept
yearlyKeep integer >= 0 no 2 how many of the yearly backups to be kept
EmailAddress name@domain.com yes root comma separated list of mail addresses, where the messages should be sent to
Note: By default Affa only sends messages on errors, never on success (see property chattyOnSuccess).
RetryAttempts integer >= 0 no 4 When set to a value>0, Affa re-run a failed job RetryAttempts times with a delay of RetryAfter seconds.
RetryAfter seconds >= 0 no 900 when set to a value>0, wait RetryAfter seconds before re-running the job after an error. Only applicable with RetryAttempts>0
RetryNotification yes or no no no when set to no, Affa does not send an error message when a job has failed and RetryAttempts is configured. An error message is only sent when the last attempt has failed.
NRPEtrigger hours no 24 NRPE reports a job as critical when the last successful run is older then NRPEtrigger hours. To exclude the job from monitoring set to a value < 0.
SambaShare yes or no no no Access to the job archives via CIFS protocol.
SambaValidUser local account yes affa User who has permission to access the job archives via the CIFS protocol.
preJobCommand
preJobCommandRemote
path relative to /etc/affa/scripts/ yes <none> Scripts to be executed before a job run. The job name and type (scheduled, daily etc.) are passed as arguments to the program. The preJobCommandRemote scripts are copied to the remote server and then executed there. The scripts are executed in alphabetical order. Use a numerical prefix if you need a specific order e.g. 01scriptB, 02remotescriptA, 03scriptA. Use the included prescript-sample.pl and prescriptRemote-sample.pl as a starting point for own scripts.
Note: If you use the parameter “SMEServer=yes”, you may delete the “Included” relative to SME default directories in the jobconfig.ini: they will be backuped automatically.
postJobCommand
postJobCommandRemote
path relative to /etc/affa/scripts/ yes <none> Scripts to be executed after a job run. The job name, the type (scheduled, daily etc.) and the exit code of the job run are passed as arguments to the program. The postJobCommandRemote scripts are copied to the remote server and then executed there. The scripts are executed in alphabetical order. Use a numerical prefix if you need a specific order e.g. 01scriptB, 02remotescriptA, 03scriptA. Use the included postscript-sample.pl and postscriptRemote-sample.pl as a starting point for own scripts.
Note: If you use the parameter “SMEServer=yes”, you may delete the “Included” relative to SME default directories in the jobconfig.ini: they will be backuped automatically.
dedup yes or no no no The purpose of the deduplication is to remove duplicate files to save backup space. When set to 'yes' file deduplication is run after the synchronization has been completed. It looks for files that have identical content, user, group and permissions and replace duplicates by hardlinks. Deduplication scans the just completed archive and the previous one, that usually is

scheduled.0 and daily.0 or scheduled.0 and scheduled.1. Consider this scenario: A user has renamed directories or files. Rsync sees those as new ones and copies them. Deduplication finds the identical copies in the previous archive and replace them by hardlinks. To use deduplication the Freedup program needs to be installed. Affa actually runs freedup -upg scheduled.0 <previous_archive>.

dedupKill yes or no no no When set to 'no' the job ignores affa --kill or affa --killall when deduplication is running. This is useful in the context of killAt which is typically used to stop bandwith utilisation.
DiskSpaceWarn strict or normal or risky or none no strict Checks disk space remainin on the backup device and issue a warning via email.
sshPort service port no 22 When sshd on the remote host listens on a non-standard port, set the port here.
ConnectionCheckTimeout seconds no 120 Affa checks the ssh connection before the rsync process is started and exits with an error after the configured time if the host did not respond.
BandwidthLimit integer>=0 kilobytes per second no 0 Limits the data transfer rate. A value of zero specifies no limit.
rsyncTimeout seconds no 900 Rsync exits after the configured time if no data was transferred. This avoids infinitely hanging in case of a network error.
rsyncCompress yes or no no yes Compress the transferred data. May be useful with slow internet connections. Increases CPU load on remote and backup host.
rsync--inplace yes or no no yes Set to no if the rsync version on the remote hist does not support this option.
rsync--modify-window integer >= 0 no 0 When comparing two timestamps, rsync treats the timestamps as being equal if they differ by no more than the modify-window value. This is normally 0 for an exact match. A value >= 0 is useful if you can't get the clocks of the remote host and the Affa server in sync.
rsyncOptions string no <none> Additional option string to be passed to rsync
localNice -19...+19 no 0 run rsync local process niced.
remoteNice -19...+19 no 0 run rsync process on source niced.
killAt HHMM no <none> The time at which a job will be killed if it was still running. You can use it for example to kill jobs that are running over the internet early in the morning so that your users have the full bandwidth available during office hours.
resumeKilledAt HHMM no <none> The time at which a killed job will be resumed. This allows you to start earlier in the evening than the scheduled time.
chattyOnSuccess integer >= 0 no 0 When set to a value>0, Affa sends a message on a successfully completed job run and decrements the chattyOnSuccess value. When the value has reached zero, Affa falls back to the default and only sends messages on errors.
AutomountDevice
AutomountPoint
full path no <none> Device and mountpoint of backup device (e.g. USB disk). Device is automounted before a job starts and unmounted after job completion. With both properties empty no automount is done.
AutomountOptions string no <none> An option string passed to the mount command.
AutoUnmount yes or no no yes When set to 'no' the automounted device stay mounted after the Affa run.
Debug yes or no no no Set to yes to increase log verbosity.
remoteRsyncBinary full path no /usr/bin/rsync If the rsync program on the remote server is located in non-standard location, set it here
remoteNiceBinary full path no /bin/nice If the nice program on the remote server is located in non-standard location, set it here.
localRsyncBinary full path no /usr/bin/rsync If the local rsync program is located in non-standard location, set it here
localNiceBinary full path no /bin/nice If the nice local program is located in non-standard location, set it here.
RemoteAuthorizedKeysFile path relative to remote user's home or full path no .ssh/authorized_keys2 If the remote host stores the authorized keys file in a non-standard location, set it here.
rsyncdMode yes or no no no Set to yes to connect to the rsync daemon on the remote host (instead of running rsync over ssh).
rsyncdModule string no AFFA The rsyncd module name (only applicable with rsyncdMode=yes).
rsyncdUser string no affa The username for authentication to the rsync daemon (only applicable with rsyncdMode=yes).
rsyncdPassword string no <none> The password for authentication to the rsync daemon (only applicable with rsyncdMode=yes).
globalStatus enabled or disabled or jobs no jobs Set to enabled or disabled to overide the status settings in all job sections. When set to value jobs, the status settings in the job sections are effictive.
Note: This property is allowed only in the [GlobalAffaConfig] section.
sendStatus daily or weekly or monthly or never no weekly Defines how frequently the status will be sent.
Note: This property is allowed only in the [GlobalAffaConfig] section.
SMEServer yes or no no no When set to yes, the default e-smith directories are automatically included and the property RPMCheck=yes can be used.
Note: this property is not implemented in Affa 3 for CentOS. It has been specifically added to the fork for SME.
RPMCheck yes or no no no Only applicable to jobs that backup a SME server. Compares the packages installation of the source host with this affa backup host. Sends a message with diff list if not in sync. This check is useful, if you want have the option to rise the backup server to a production server from a backup.
Note: this property is not implemented in Affa 3 for CentOS. It has been specifically added to the fork for SME.
Watchdog yes or no no yes Only applicable to jobs that backups a SME server. When a job is started, affa installs a watchdog script on the source in /etc/cron.d/, which sends a warning message, if the next scheduled job (taken from the TimeSchedule property + 10 minutes) did not run. This guarantees, that you will be notfied even in case of a affa server outage. The watchdog script send a daily reminder message, if the error continues. The next run job replaces the watchdog script with a new trigger time.
Note: this property is not implemented in Affa 3 for CentOS. It has been specifically added to the fork for SME.

Default configuration properties

For all 'name=value' properties defaults can be set in the [GlobalAffaConfig] section which are used in all job configuration when the corresponding property is omitted. For example, when these properties are set in [GlobalAffaConfig] section, they can be omitted in the specific job configurations. This is useful, when you set up many similar jobs.

Example: You want to set the property 'localNice' to 19 for all jobs. Then add the following section in one of your configuration files:

[GlobalAffaConfig]
localNice=19

Consequently you don't need to set this property for your individual jobs. Properties set in the job record override the defaults.

Properties for global Settings

The following special properties are only applicable to the [GlobalAffaConfig] section:

  • sendStatus
  • globalStatus

All jobs can be disabled for execution through 'cronjobs" with setting 'globalStatus' to 'disabled'.

[GlobalAffaConfig]
globalStatus=disabled

To re-enable run, either delete the above configuration line, or set to:

globalStatus=jobs

which is the default value.

You can also set the value to

globalStatus=enabled

which enforces the the job execution through 'cronjobs' and overrides the specified values in the section for the specific job.

Usage and command line options

Important.png Note:
Options can be abbreviated to uniqueness, e.g. --mak is equal to --make-cronjobs


affa --run JOB

Starts a job run. Usually done by the cronjob.

affa --make-cronjobs

Configures the cronjobs as scheduled in the jobs records. Run this command to make changes of time related properties effective i.e. TimeSchedule, killAt and resumeKilledAt properties. By default this command will by executed by 'cronjobs' every 15 minutes. So you don't need to run this command manually, you can also just wait max. 15 minutes before your updates job configurations become effective.

affa --configcheck

Checks the syntax and values in all configuration files found in /etc/affa/. Run this command after modifying the configuration. Lower/Upper case errors in property names are corrected automatically.

affa --send-key [JOB JOB ...]

This first generates the RSA key on the Affa Server, if not already done. Then the public key is send to the hosts 'remoteHostName' as defined in section of each job JOB and generates the job specific ssh known host entry.

Important.png Note:
When initially doing this step, you will need to temporarily enable "Allow secure shell access using standard passwords" on the source server.


affa --check-connections [JOB JOB ...]

Checks the ssh login and if applicable rsyncd auth for all jobs given as arguments. Without any arguments all jobs are checked.

affa --full-restore [--preserve-newer=no] [--delete=yes] JOB [ARCHIVE]

Does a full restore remote server of all backed up files and directories from the backup ARCHIVE. If ARCHIVE is not given, the archive 'scheduled.0' is used as the default. The full restore reconstructs the server as it was at the time of the backup. After the restore the source host reboots.

With option --preserve-newer=yes files on the remote server with modification time newer than on the backup are not overwritten.

With option --delete=yes all files on the remote server, which are not in the backup, are deleted.

If the parameter “SMEServer=yes” is set, the signal-event pre-restore and signal-event post-upgrade will be used automatically.

affa --list-archives JOB

Displays a table of all present archives of job JOB with date, number of files, size and and bytes received. While column buTime shows the actual rsync time, the column ddTime shows the length of the subsequent deduplication run. ddYld is the gained deduplication yield in bytes.

Affa version 3.1.0-0 on affa-2.mydomain.com
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Job: fshare-ak                                                               |
| Description: Fileserver AK                                                   |
| Directory: /var/affa/fshare-ak/                                              |
| Hostname: 10.204.104.4                                                       |
| Email: sysadmin@mydomain.com                                                 |
+-----+----------------------+--------+--------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
| Run | Completion date      | buTime | ddTime | ddYld | Files | Size  | Recvd |
+-----+----------------------+--------+--------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
| Y 0 | Wed 2010-06-23 20:26 | 11m53s |      - |     - |  412k |  143G |  470M |
+-----+----------------------+--------+--------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
| M11 | Sun 2010-08-29 20:22 |  7m50s |      - |     - |  417k |  153G |   14M |
| M10 | Sun 2010-09-26 20:23 | 8m57s  |      - |     - |  430k |  156G |   14M |
| M 9 | Sun 2010-10-31 20:25 | 10m05s |      - |     - |  448k |  161G |   15M |
| M 8 | Sun 2010-11-28 20:31 | 16m42s |      - |     - |  463k |  167G |   17M |
| M 7 | Sun 2011-01-02 20:48 | 33m07s |      - |     - |  486k |  173G |  1.1G |
| M 6 | Sun 2011-01-30 20:33 | 18m54s |      - |     - |  493k |  176G |   24M |
| M 5 | Sun 2011-02-27 20:28 | 13m31s |      - |     - |  490k |  176G |   19M |
| M 4 | Sun 2011-03-27 20:28 | 13m08s |      - |     - |  491k |  175G |   17M |
| M 3 | Sun 2011-05-01 20:30 | 15m41s |      - |     - |  493k |  179G |   18M |
| M 2 | Sun 2011-05-29 20:28 | 13m40s |      - |     - |  494k |  182G |   31M |
| M 1 | Sun 2011-06-19 20:26 | 11m20s |      - |     - |  493k |  183G |   17M |
| M 0 | Sun 2011-07-03 20:28 | 13m46s |      - |     - |  496k |  183G |   18M |
+-----+----------------------+--------+--------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
| W 3 | Sun 2011-07-10 20:28 | 13m38s |      - |     - |  479k |  180G |   16M |
| W 2 | Mon 2011-07-11 20:35 | 20m27s |      - |     - |  479k |  180G |  301M |
| W 1 | Fri 2011-07-15 20:30 | 15m53s |      - |     - |  480k |  180G |   62M |
| W 0 | Sun 2011-07-24 19:39 |  9m25s |      - |     - |  482k |  181G |   16M |
+-----+----------------------+--------+--------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
| D 6 | Thu 2011-07-28 19:42 | 12m22s |      - |     - |  483k |  182G |  176M |
| D 5 | Fri 2011-07-29 23:29 | 11m10s |  5h33m |   45G |  483k |  182G |   16M |
| D 4 | Sat 2011-07-30 19:53 | 23m26s |  2h30m |  8.3G |  483k |  182G |   17M |
| D 3 | Sun 2011-07-31 20:07 | 37m31s |  4m47s |  8.3G |  483k |  182G |   17M |
| D 2 | Mon 2011-08-01 20:44 |  1h14m |  7h50m |  8.5G |  484k |  182G |  630M |
| D 1 | Tue 2011-08-02 20:02 | 32m28s | 12h20m |  8.3G |  484k |  182G |   74M |
| D 0 | Wed 2011-08-03 19:58 | 28m46s | 11h01m |  8.5G |  484k |  182G |  214M |
+-----+----------------------+--------+--------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
| S 0 | Thu 2011-08-04 20:00 | 30m28s | 11h52m |  8.5G |  484k |  182G |  203M |
+-----+----------------------+--------+--------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
affa --list-archives [--csv] JOB

With --csv, the output is in machine readable colon separated format.

Archive:Count;Date;Files;Size;RootDirFilesystemAvail;RootDirFilesystemUsed;valid;TotalBytesReceived;ExecutionTime;DedupTotalFiles;DedupReplacedFiles;DedupSavedBytes;DedupExectime;DedupDate
monthly;00000;201509270631;393237;37252509103;166889260;47876936;yes;1327370;1160638358;99;;;;;
weekly;00003;201510040531;390273;37042612135;164566692;50199504;yes;1117726;45430532;59;;;;;
weekly;00002;201510110531;395553;37299589800;162612204;52153992;yes;1117092;92369237;64;;;;;
weekly;00001;201510180531;403831;37707599172;161855844;52910352;yes;1317083;148317764;64;;;;;
weekly;00000;201510250531;406509;38146200127;161041156;53725040;yes;1104759;64083948;63;;;;;
daily;00006;201510310531;415663;39248862982;162979176;51787020;yes;1958110;198060283;66;;;;;
daily;00005;201511010531;411014;38563389171;163061136;51705060;yes;1156506;48903675;75;;;;;
daily;00004;201511020531;408910;38612857040;162359124;52407072;yes;1007434;210812387;75;;;;;
daily;00003;201511030531;410615;37815861577;162026060;52740136;yes;1524069;162697515;67;;;;;
daily;00002;201511040531;414784;38131734213;161990024;52776172;yes;1571657;134250735;63;;;;;
daily;00001;201511050531;420780;38433895988;161906580;52859616;yes;2021507;149388808;103;;;;;
daily;00000;201511060531;425920;38677614350;161778812;52987384;yes;1987971;166510621;71;;;;;
scheduled;00000;201511070531;425663;38815712018;161612600;53153596;yes;2003540;139603231;68;;;;;
affa --status [--csv]

Displays a table of all configured jobs with enable status, time of last and next run, size of the most recent archive, exectution time of the last run and the number of scheduled (S), daily (D), weekly (W), monthly (M) and yearly (Y) archives. If last time shows 'failed', the job did not run in the last 24h. For disabled jobs 'Last' always shows 'failed' after 24 h. To see the date and time of the last run of those jobs use the --list-archives option. Column 'Next' shows the time when the next run will be started, if 'Enabled' is 'yes'. Column 'ddYld' shows the deduplication yield in bytes.

Affa version 3.1.0-0 on affa-2.mydomain.com
+--------------+-----+-------+--------+-------+-------+-------+----------------+
| Job          | ENA |  Last |   Time |  Next |  Size | ddYld | N of S,D,W,M,Y |
+--------------+-----+-------+--------+-------+-------+-------+----------------+
| ads-ak       | yes | 20:20 |  0m29s | 20:20 |   28M |     - |  1, 7, 2, 0, 0 |
| ak-user-ma.. | yes | 22:31 |  1m51s | 22:30 |  170M |     - |  3, 7, 4, 6, 0 |
| azubi-1      | yes | 03:39 |  3h24m | 00:15 |   44G |  1.2G |  1, 7, 4,10, 1 |
| dcpant       | yes | 03:06 |  1m03s | 03:05 |  1.3G |     - |  1, 7, 4,10, 1 |
| eshare       | yes | 21:06 | 21m01s | 20:45 |   24G |  178M |  1, 7, 4,10, 1 |
| etherpad     | yes | 20:40 |  0m13s | 20:40 |  3.1M |     - |  1, 7, 4, 2, 0 |
| fazubi       | yes | 08:16 | 11h16m | 21:00 |  132G |  3.3G |  1, 7, 4,10, 1 |
| fschare-rh   | yes | de-duplicating (pid 9719)              |  1, 7, 4,10, 1 |
| fsh-02       | yes | 07:53 | 12h23m | 19:30 |  182G |  8.5G |  1, 7, 4,10, 1 |
| fshare-ak2   | yes | 00:30 |  0m26s | 00:30 |  415M |  544k |  1, 7, 4,10, 1 |
| helpdesk     | yes | 21:27 |  2m16s | 21:25 |  895M |  138k |  1, 7, 4,10, 0 |
| it-share     | yes | running rsync (pid 9744)               |  1, 7, 1, 0, 0 |
| lightroom    | yes | waiting (pid 9528)                     |  1, 7, 4, 2, 0 |
| localhost    | yes | 02:15 |  0m08s | 02:15 |  395k |     - |  1, 7, 2, 0, 0 |
| mediawiki    | yes | 16:10 |  0m06s | 19:40 |  1.1G |  6.7M |  3, 7, 4,10, 1 |
| mshare       | yes | 00:48 |  1h33m | 23:15 |   18G |  2.4G |  1, 7, 4,10, 1 |
| wshare       | yes | 00:34 |  1h49m | 22:45 |   23G |  484M |  1, 7, 4,10, 1 |
+--------------+-----+-------+--------+-------+-------+-------+----------------+
2 disabled jobs not listed. Use --all to display.

With --csv, the output is in machine readable colon separated format.

affa --show-config-pathes [--csv] [JOB JOB ...]

Prints the full pathes of the file where the section of job JOB is defined.

affa --show-default-config

Prints a list of all allowed property names with their default values. These values are used, when omitted in the job sections.

affa --show-schedule [--all]

Prints a 'graphical' timetable for all enabled jobs. The resolution is 30 minutes. An 'S' character marks the scheduled start times. The duration of the job runs are marked with '=' characters.

Affa version 3.1.0-0 on affa-2.mydomain.com
              TIME 12:00    16:00    20:00    0:00     4:00     8:00
            fsh-02 -------- -------S ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ --------
            ads-ak -------- -------- S------- -------- -------- --------
          etherpad -------- -------- -S------ -------- -------- --------
            eshare -------- -------- -S~----- -------- -------- --------
            fazubi -------- -------- --S~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~-------
          helpdesk -------- -------- --S----- -------- -------- --------
          it-share -------- -------- ---S=~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~- -------- busy
            wshare -------- -------- -----S~~ ~~------ -------- --------
ak-user-management -------- -------- -----S-- -------- -------- --------
        fschare-rh -------- -------- -----S=- -------- --~----- -------- busy
            mshare -------- -------- ------S= ~~------ -------- --------
           azubi-1 -------- -------- -------- S=~~~~~~ -------- --------
        fshare-ak2 -------- -------- -------- -S------ -------- --------
         mediawiki -------- -------- -------- ---S---- -------- ----S---
         localhost -------- -------- -------- ----S--- -------- --------
            dcpant -------- -------- -------- ------S- -------- --------
         lightroom -------- -------- -------- -------- -------- S------- busy
Symbols: S=scheduled K=kill R=resume '='=rsync '~'=dedup
2 disabled jobs not listed. Use --all to display.
affa --log-tail [JOB]

Displays the tail of the logfile of job JOB with live update. This command is identical to tail -n 50 -f /path/to/logfile. Without the JOB argument the global logfile is shown.

affa --send-status

Sends the status table, the disk-usage and the archive list of all jobs to the email addresses configured in the [GlobalAffaConfig] section.

affa --disk-usage

Shows the current disk usage of all root dir filesystems

Affa version 3.1.0-0 on affa-2.mydomain.de
+------+--------+--------+----------------------------------------------------+
| Use% |   Used |  Avail | Root Dir                                           |
+------+--------+--------+----------------------------------------------------+
|  71% |  938GB |  365GB | /var/affa                                          |
|  20% |  194GB |  759GB | /mnt/affadev                                       |
+------+--------+--------+----------------------------------------------------+

With --csv, the output is printed in a machine readable colon separated format.

affa --cleanup JOB

After you have lowered a keep value, e.g. scheduledKeep, then archives with a higher indices will no longer be shifted and will exist for ever. This option finds these archives and deletes them after confirmation. When running the cleanup command on a locally attached USB drive, manually mount the USB drive BEFORE running this command. When finished, manually unmount the USB drive. This requirement may apply to some of the other commands listed here.

affa --rename-job JOB NEWNAME

Renames the job JOB to NEWNAME including the section name and archive directories.

affa --move-archive JOB NEWROOTDIR

Moves the archive directory of job JOB to the rootdir NEWROOTDIR and adjusts the value of property RootDir. NEWROOTDIR must be a full path starting with a slash. As moving across filesystems (e.g. from an external USB drive to the local disk) is not possible, Affa uses a copy command in this case and deletes the source directory after that. Depending on the archive size, copying across filesystems can take a long time.

affa --delete-job [--revoke-key] JOB

Irreversibly deletes all archives, of job JOB and set the status property to disable. With --revoke-key option, the public key on the remote server will be deleted.

affa --revoke-key JOB

Deletes the public RSA key on the remote server.

affa --kill JOB

Terminates the running job JOB and all its child processes (rsync processes).

affa --killall

Terminates all running jobs.

affa --mailtest JOB

Sends a test email to the email addresses configured in the JOB section. Use this to verify, that your mail system is working.

Important.png Note:
By default Affa only sends messages on errors, never on success (see property chattyOnSuccess).


affa --nrpe [JOB JOB ...]

Checks for jobs that were not run the last NRPRtrigger hours and reports them as failed. A Nagios/ICINGA NRPE complient message is printed and exit status returned.

affa --version

Displays the Affa version number and checks Samba and Freedup installation.

affa --warranty

Displays the disclaimer of liability.

affa --license

Displays the license Affa is released under.

affa --help

Displays a short help.

affa --debug

Enables verbose logging. Overrides job and global configurations.

SME Specific usage and command line options

These commands are implemented in a fork of Affa 3 project for use with SME. They are not part of the Affa 3 for CentOS project.

SME server 'rise' function

Important.png Note:
Before trying a rise please check /var/affa/YourServer/rpms-missing.txt

You may find there are missing rpms/contribs that template fragments depends on.

It may be necessary to install some of these rpms before a rise to prevent issues.


The SME server version of Affa has a unique feature restore feature enabling you to turn your Affa backup server into a replica of your server. It is an extremely fast way to restore your server.

affa --rise [--all] JOB [ARCHIVE]

Runs a full restore on the Affa server (!!!) of all standard files and directories from the backup ARCHIVE of job JOB. In other words: After completion, the Affa box reboots as a clone of the source server. Ensure, that the source server has been powered off before you reboot the Affa box, otherwise the network interface will not come up. This is important, when you run --rise remotely. The --rise feature only works with SME servers and should only be used on dedicated backup servers.

With option --all, all files and directories of the archive as defined by the include[] properties are restored. Files or directories with the same name on the Affa server will be overwritten and cannot be restored by a --undo-rise. This should not be an issue on a dedicated Affa server which does not hold any other data. After a possible --undo-rise those additional restored data must be removed manually.

Please note, that the rise process backs up the the Affa server itself before doing the restore from the archive. This backup is used by a possible --undo-rise run to restore the Affa server. Only the standard files and directories are backed up. Data in non-standard locations (like /opt) are untouched and will still exist after the rise run if they don't get overwritten by data of the backup (=if the backup contains /opt too e.g.).


Important.png Note:
The above command is not implemented in Affa 3 for CentOS. It has been specifically added to the fork for SME.


affa --undo-rise

This feature reverts a risen Affa box to a backup server. After a reboot, all configured jobs based on standard files and directories will work again.


Important.png Note:
The above command is not implemented in Affa 3 for CentOS. It has been specifically added to the fork for SME.


Example setups

Dedicated backup server

  • Setup a dedicated server and install Affa 3 for SME.
  • Setup a job for every server you want to backup.
  • Send the public keys to every server.
affa --send-key JOBNAME
  • Check whether password-less logins are working.
affa --check-connections
  • Check whether the scheduled jobs are evenly distributed over the day.
affa --show-schedule
  • Create the cron jobs.
affa --make-cronjobs
  • Check the status after 24 hours.
affa --status

Backup of single ibays

Suppose you want to backup the ibays 'staff1' and 'staff2' on your production server with WAN IP 82.123.1.1 to an Affa server in a different location over the internet every night at 2:30am.

  • Log into the Affa server.
  • Create a dedicated job file /etc/affa/ibay-staff.conf . Edit it and set
[ibay-staff]
Description=Backup of ibay-staff on 82.123.1.1
remoteHostName=82.123.1.1
TimeSchedule=0230
SMEServer=no
Include=/home/e-smith/files/ibays/staff1
Include=/home/e-smith/files/ibays/staff2
  • Save the configuration
  • send the public key to the production server
affa --send-key ibay-staff
  • check next morning
affa --list-archives ibay-staff
affa --status
ls /var/affa/ibay-staff

Two production servers backup each other

You have two sites connnected via a VPN and a SME Server running on each site. In that case you don't need a dedicated Affa backup server. Both production servers can additionally act as Affa backup servers backing up the server of the other site. Simply install Affa and configure a job that backs up the other one. You can use all Affa features except of the rise feature.

When using the rise feature, the server becomes any of the backed up systems, which is less useful in this scenario as it would give you a running copy of the server of the other site while the server of this site is down.

To get redundancy and a faster restore you can configure a local backup to an external USB or NAS device.

Please pay attention, that you do not backup the archives back to the other site. Set the RootDir property to a path which is not included in the SME default backup list. When leaving the RootDir property to its default '/var/affa', this is guaranteed.

Use Affa to backup to a NFS-mounted NAS or a local attached USB drive

Important.png Note:
This chapter still needs to be checked whether it works with Affa 3 for SME.


You want to backup your SME production server with hostname 'prodbox‘ and IP 10.200.48.1 on a mounted filesystem instead of setting up a dedicated Affa box.

Setup NAS

You have a FreeNAS box with IP 10.200.48.2 up and running with NFS service enabled. The disk is mounted to /mnt/affashare. You have authorized the IP address of your prodbox server to access share /mnt/affashare.

  • log into the 'prodbox' and install the NFS packages
/usr/bin/yum install --enablerepo=smecontribs smeserver-nfs
  • now enable and start the portmapper service
config setprop portmap status enabled
service portmap start
  • mount the NFS share
mkdir -p /mnt/affadevice
mount 10.200.48.2:/mnt/affashare /mnt/affadevice


Alternatively setup a USB drive
  • log into the 'prodbox'
  • connect a USB hard disk to the USB Bus. Now you must determine what device the kernel has assigned to the drive. View the /var/log/message and search for Initializing USB Mass Storage driver. A few lines below you'll find the name of the device. In this example it is sdh. Replace /dev/sdh by your device in following instructions.
  • use the fdisk program to create a linux partition. Verify that this is really the attached USB drive before you continue!
fdisk /dev/sdh

You'll most likely find an existing vfat dos partition, which you have to delete first. In the following we assume, that you have created a single partition /dev/sdh1.

  • now format the drive with an ext3 filesystem
mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdh1
  • make the mount point
mkdir -p /mnt/affadevice
  • add the following line to the /etc/fstab
/dev/sdh1 /mnt/affadevice ext3 defaults
  • mount the drive
mount /mnt/affadevice
  • crosscheck your work using the df command
df
Setup Affa

You want to run backups at 11:30 h, 15:30 h and 19:30 h and you want to keep the last 3 scheduled backups, 7 daily, 5 weekly, 12 monthly and 1 yearly backups.

  • log into the 'prodbox' and install the Affa packages as described above.
  • create/edit the conf file of the job: nano /etc/affa/prodbox.conf

and set:

[prodbox]
remoteHostName=localhost
TimeSchedule=1130
TimeSchedule=1530
TimeSchedule=1930
scheduledKeep=3
dailyKeep=7
weeklyKeep=5
monthlyKeep=12
yearlyKeep=1
RootDir=/mnt/affadevice

Review the other properties and change them to your needs.

  • run the job manually
affa --run prodbox
Limitations

With this kind of setup you cannot use the affa rise feature, as it requires the backup archive to be located on the same fileystem as the server installation. The rise option uses hardlinks, which are not working across filesystems.

Automount

Having the backup archives in the same filesystem is always a risk, which can be minimized by using the automount feature. Then the external filesystem is only mounted during a job run.

In the NAS example set

AutomountDevice=10.200.48.2:/mnt/affashare
AutomountPoint=/mnt/affadevice

and skip the step 2.

In the USB drive example set

AutomountDevice=/dev/sdc1
AutomountPoint=/mnt/affadevice

and skip the steps 5 to 8.

The mount point will be automatically created, if it does not exist.
To access the archive directory, you need to mount it manually.

Copying a AFFA USB hard drive archive to a new disk

Affa uses copious amounts of hard links to compress and preserve disk space for its backups. If you are in the situation where you want to copy such a disk archive to a new (bigger) disk, you need to ensure that the hard links are copied correctly or the destination copy may became significantly bigger than the total of the source archive.

One way to copy across file systems (i.e. two different USB disks) and preserve the hard links is as follows:

  • mount both USB drives but with different mount points. e.g. /media/backup1 & /media/backup2 and then:
mkdir /media/backup2/archive 
cd /media/backup1/archive
tar cpf - . | ( cd /media/backup2/archive && tar xpf - )

where archive is the name of the AFFA job you want to move to the other disk.

Restore

Restore single files or directories

Example 1: It's Tuesday January 6th 2009, when user 'briedlin' asks you to restore the messages of his mailbox 'orders' he has accidentally deleted on Monday.

  • You first must check what backup archives are available. The jobname of this server backup is 'primmail'. To get a listing of all archives run
affa --list-archives primmail

(see the example listing in chapter Affa#Usage_and_command_line_options

  • Choose the daily.0 archive, which was created Monday night. Now restore the mailbox 'orders' using the rsync command.
  • Now run the rsync command (note the trailing slash!) on the Affa backup server:
export RDIR=/home/e-smith/files/users/briedlin/Maildir/.orders/  # this variable is used to shorten the next command line
rsync -av /var/affa/primmail/daily.0/$RDIR 10.204.48.1:$RDIR

If the servers are configured to use a different ssh port eg 2222, then instead do:

export RDIR=/home/e-smith/files/users/briedlin/Maildir/.orders/  # this variable is used to shorten the next command line
rsync -av -e 'ssh -i /root/.ssh/id_rsa_affa -p 2222' /var/affa/primmail/daily.0/$RDIR 10.204.48.1:$RDIR


Example 2: A user has deleted the file orderform.pdf from ibay 'docs' on the server 10.204.48.1 and asks you to restore it.

  • You have searched and found the latest version of this file in weekly archive of job 'prodserv'.
  • To copy it back to the server 10.204.48.1 run on the Affa server
export RFILE=/home/e-smith/files/ibays/docs/files/orderform.pdf  # this variable is used to shorten the next command line
rsync -av /var/affa/prodserv/weekly.1/$RFILE 10.204.48.1:$RFILE
  • If the servers are configured to use a different ssh port eg 2222, then instead do:
export RFILE=/home/e-smith/files/ibays/docs/files/orderform.pdf  # this variable is used to shorten the next command line
rsync -av -e 'ssh -i /root/.ssh/id_rsa_affa -p 2222' /var/affa/prodserv/weekly.1/$RFILE 10.204.48.1:$RFILE


Example 3: Restoring a file with special characters in the path

Do not use shell variables to shorten the command. It would complicate things more than it would help. Quote the source and destination path. In the destination path escape blank characters with a double backslash and brackets with a single backslash. On the Affa backup server do:

rsync -av "/var/affa/fileshare/daily.4/home/e-smith/files/ibays/mechfiles/files/Valve Control (Design Gr)/VALVE LIST FOR ISSUED.xls" "192.168.1.7:/home/e-smith/files/ibays/mechfiles/files/Valve\\ Control\\ \(Design\\ Gr\)/VALVE\\ LIST\\ FOR\\ ISSUED.xls"

If the servers are configured to use a different ssh port eg 2222, then instead do:

rsync -av -e 'ssh -i /root/.ssh/id_rsa_affa -p 2222' "/var/affa/fileshare/daily.4/home/e-smith/files/ibays/mechfiles/files/Valve Control (Design Gr)/VALVE LIST FOR ISSUED.xls" "192.168.1.7:/home/e-smith/files/ibays/mechfiles/files/Valve\\ Control\\ \(Design\\ Gr\)/VALVE\\ LIST\\ FOR\\ ISSUED.xls"

Full restore

Important.png Note:
Please for notes about rpms-missing.txt above: https://wiki.contribs.org/Affa#SME_Specific_usage_and_command_line_options


Generally:

affa --full-restore [optional settings] JOB [ARCHIVE]

This rsyncs the data (files and directories )from the backup ARCHIVE back to the 'remoteHostname' defined in the configuration of the job JOB. If ARCHIVE is not given, the archive 'scheduled.0' is used as the default. The --full-restore reconstructs the server as it was at the time of the backup and takes following IMPORTANT optional settings in consideration:

With option [--preserve-newer=yes] files on the remote server with modification time newer than on the backup are not overwritten.

With option [--delete=yes] all files on the remote server, which are not in the backup, are deleted.

If the parameter “SMEServer=yes” is set, the signal-event pre-restore and signal-event post-upgrade will be used automatically.

After the restore is done, the restored server reboots automatically.

Example: You have backuped your production server 'prodsrv' as job 'prodbox'. To restore only lost data from the latest backup run

affa --full-restore prodbox

To restore exactly from the older archive daily.3 run

affa --full-restore [--preserve-newer=no] [--delete=yes]  prodbox daily.3


Warning.png Warning:
A full restore with --preserve-newer no and --delete yes reconstructs the server as it was at the time of the backup. That means, that all files created or server configuration changes made after the backup will be lost!


Moving a SME server installation to new hardware using the Affa rise feature or the backup-restore functions

Please see this Howto: Moving SME to new Hardware

Restore from USB drive on new server

This tip comes from http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=42412.0

Q) I have complete backups using affa stored on a usb hard drive connected to our affa backup server. I need to restore an earlier monthly backup of our job "mailbackup" to a test server rather than back to the original system. If I did it from the backup server I see the instructions of how to rise that server to the current backup on that server but I want to restore a point about a month ago before some strange things happened. And I want to do it on a machine that is not our backup server or our production server. I tried to figure out how but am lost in the options. My goal is to do some testing.

A) On your testserver setup a job "mailbackup" identical to that on your backup server (a copy of the conf file is available into the folder of the archive, as an hidden file .mailbackup-setup.ini) but set property RootDir to /var/affa and property status to disabled. Connect the USB drive and copy the archive of the job mailbackup to /var/affa. Then run affa --rise mailbackup ARCHIVE

FAQ

What files and directories are included by default?

With SMEServer=no nothing at all.

With SMEServer=yes the SME default backup list is the output of following command:

perl -e 'use esmith::Backup;$b=new esmith::Backup;print join("\n",$b->restore_list)."\n"' 

and as additional folder:

/etc/affa


Important.png Note:
The following example needs to be reworked for Affa 3.


Can I exclusively backup image files from a specific directory? Yes. Assuming you want to backup all gif and jpg files from directory /home/e-smith/files/ibays/pictures/files use this configuration

db affa setprop JOBNAME SMEServer no           # do not include SME Server default directories and files
db affa setprop JOBNAME Include[0] '/home/e-smith/files/ibays/pictures/files' # start searching here
db affa setprop JOBNAME Include[1] '*/'        # search the tree recursively
db affa setprop JOBNAME Include[2] '*.gif'     # copy files that match these patterns
db affa setprop JOBNAME Include[3] '*.jpg'  
db affa setprop JOBNAME Exclude[0] '*'         # exclude all others
db affa setprop JOBNAME rsyncOptions '-m'      # do not create empty folders


How can I move a backup archive from my production server in a remote branch office to the Affa server using an USB disk? I want to avoid to download the first full backup over the internet. Install Affa on your production server, connect and mount the USB disk. Setup a job to write the archive to the USB disk. After the job run, connect the USB disk to your Affa server and setup the job in the same way. Use the setup script from the archive directory. You only need to change the remoteHostName property. Now use the --move-archive option to move the archive to the local disk. If not already done, send the public key to your production server. You're done.


How do I backup two SME servers behind a firewall? First you need to configure port forwardings for the ssh service on your firewall. Use a non-standard port, e.g 2200->22, for your second server. Setup a job on your Affa server for each of your production servers. Set up the job property sshPort=2200 for second server.

Uninstall

This removes the installed Affa package, all configuration data and all backup archives.

Run the following commands for each job:

affa --revoke-key JOBNAME
affa --delete-job JOBNAME

Verify that all jobs have been deleted:

affa --status

Remove the Affa package:

yum remove smeserver-affa-3.2.2.1-0.noarch.rpm

Cleaning up:

rm -f /etc/cron.d/affa
rm -rf /etc/affa
rm -rf /var/affa /var/log/affa

Troubleshooting

Affa stops working after prodserver was rebuild.

Description:

  • Affa stopped working or is broken.
  • When affaserver tries to make an ssh connection to prodserver it fails.
  • In the /var/log/affa/jobname.log file you will this message: "SSH connection to prodserver ip failed. Did you send the public key".
  • Resending the keys does not solve the problem.

Solution:

  • This is probably due to the key for prodserver that is stored on the affaserver no longer matches the key of prodserver.
  • You need remove the existing key so that the next ssh connection re-gets the keys from prodserver.
  • From the command line edit the /root/.ssh/known_hosts file and remove the line for prodserver. It starts with: prodserver ip ssh-rsa

Bug report

Affa is listed in the bugtracker contribs section. Please report all bugs, new feature requests and documentation issues there.


IDProductVersionStatusSummary (8 tasks)
12165SME Contribs10.0CONFIRMEDrsync update rsync.x86_64 0:3.1.2-11.el7_9 breaks AFFA sync
12084SME Contribs10.0RESOLVEDAFFA --run job ends with message "uninitialized value"
12081SME Contribs10.0RESOLVEDif host key verification fails (because response no), affa tries again 3
11784SME Contribs10.0VERIFIEDConf files placed in /etc/affa cannot contain spaces and/or sub folders with spaces
10467SME Contribs10.0CONFIRMEDNFR : before a rise check if installed rpm on original server are also present on new server
10373SME Contribs10.0CONFIRMEDMissing newline at end of config prevents conjob
10299SME Contribs10.0CONFIRMEDqpsmtpd user missing from /etc/shadow
9186SME Contribs10.0CONFIRMEDAFFA hardlinks using NFS storage for archives

Additional information

For details of performance, changelog etc see Affa:Additional information

References