Backup with dar
Backup with dar using e-smith-backup
http://wiki.contribs.org/SME_Server:Documentation:Administration_Manual:Chapter10#Backup_or_restore
Typical scenarios
Select Configure Workstation Backup and click perform
With Server backing up to a removable or shared drive in a workstation, with a weekly full backup on Friday and subsequent daily incremental backups & you wish to retain 2 backup sets on each disk, with backup to start at 8pm and finish at 8am.
Backup is enabled. Backup is made on LAN workstation netshare via cifs Destination backup share folder is backup Login is backupuser Password is ******** Number of rotating backup sets is 2 Number of daily backups contained in each set is 7 Compression level (0-9) of backup is 4 Daily backup occurs at 20:00 Each daily backup session is cleanly timed out after 12h except full backups which are cleanly timed out after 24 hours Full backup session (new backup sets) is allowed only on Friday
USB Disk attached to Server
For help with USB Disk preparation see USBDisks
Backup is Enabled. Backup is made on local USB disk Destination backup share folder is media/Diskname Number of rotating backup sets is 2 Number of daily backups contained in each set is 14 Compression level (0-9) of backup is 4 Daily backup occurs at 18:30 Each daily backup session is cleanly timed out after 8 hours. Full backup sessions (new backup set) are allowed everyday
More commom scenarios & explanation of backup selection settings
Here are some typical scenarios, keep in mind the choice of full backup on a specified day or every day will also interact with these settings.
If you wanted to do a full backup every day, & only retain 1 historical backup, then select Number of daily backups contained in each set is 1. Number of rotating backup sets is 1.
If you wanted to do a full backup once every 7 days, then daily incremental backups every other day, & only retain 1 historical backup, select Number of daily backups contained in each set is 7. Number of rotating backup sets is 1.
If you wanted to do a full backup once every 14 days, then daily incremental backups every other day, & only retain 1 historical backup, select Number of daily backups contained in each set is 14. Number of rotating backup sets is 1.
If you wanted to do a full backup once every 28 days, then daily incremental backups every other day, & only retain 1 historical backup, select Number of daily backups contained in each set is 28. Number of rotating backup sets is 1.
For any of the above, if you want to retain more historical backup sets, then change the Number of rotating backup sets to 2 or 3 or 4 as desired
So let's say the full backup is set to run on Friday only, & the backup time is set for 11pm.
On the first Friday night at 11pm a full backup is done, this may take many hours or even time out if there is a lot of data to backup.
On the first Saturday night at 11pm if the full backup did not complete the night before (timed out as per time out setting or reached 24 hours run time), then the full backup is continued on from where it left off. If the full backup did complete, then an incremental backup is done, so only the additions & changes of data are added to the first full backup. These are added as incremental backups, in a seperate incremental backup file with a date identifier.
Then every day of the backup period (being the Number of daily backups contained in each set), ie 7, 14 or 28 days, an incremental backup is done.
Then on the Friday (being either day 8, 15 or 29 in examples above) at 11pm a new full backup is done. After that incremental backups are done each day, & so the cycle continues on.
Note, when a full backup is done: If Number of rotating backup sets is set to 1, then the original (first) backup is deleted. If Number of rotating backup sets is set to 2, then the original (first) backup set is retained & a new backup set is created/started. If Number of rotating backup sets is set to 3, then the first & second backup sets are retained & a new backup set is created/started. If Number of rotating backup sets is set to 4, then the first, second & third backup sets are retained & a new backup set is created/started. .... & so on.
Note that if a full restore is needed, the full & incremental backups are used, so all data is restored.
A "practical" backup approach may be to configure for a Full backup every 7 days & daily incremental backups in between, with 2 rotating sets, so a new full backup is created each Friday & you retain a complete 7 days worth of backups for historical purposes.
You could even extend that to retaining 4 sets of historical backups, in case you wanted to restore some individual files from 25 days ago.
Another approach is to have 2 backup USB disks, & swap the disk every Friday (during the day) so the new full backup (on Friday night) is done to the alternate USB drive, and that alternate drive is used for the rest of the 7 days period for daily incremental backups.
How often you want to create a full backup & how many daily incrementals you want to have in a set & how many historical sets & whether you swap disks off site etc, is really a part of your overall backup protocol or strategy for the site/server in question.
Backup Sets
The number of increments in a set is only equal to the "Daily backups in each set" if a multiple of 7. For instance choose 27, and you only get 21 increments, whereas 28 gives 28 increments. Or choose 3, and it gives 7 increments. (This assumes that "Full backup is allowed on" is not set to everyday).
If you want the rotation, and full backup, to occur on a specified day, then choose that day in the panel, and choose a multiple of 7 for "Daily backups in each set".
if you want a fixed number of increments in each set, then choose "Full backup is allowed on" = Anyday.
Backup timeouts explained
Even if you choose not to timeout your full backups, a full backup cannot exceed 24h (or the cron will launch a conflicting backup job).
So when you choose "Don't timeout full backup sessions", there is a default timeout just before 24h. Then the full backup can stop cleanly, and the new (incremental) backup will continue the backup.
The real goal of setting a timeout+"Don't timeout full backup sessions" is for big user files systems, when we want that the backup session occurs only the night on the week days (we need the cpu and the bandwith for something else than backuping, and if we backup on the time there is too much activity, the risk of a failing backup with dar grows up, because a file can be modified during his backup), and all the days on saturday and sunday (for most common case).
We can set :
Backup time : 10:00 PM DaysInSet : 7 FullDay on friday or saturday IncOnlyTimeOut : yes Timeout : 8 (backup stops at 6:00 AM on week days)
On monday morning we can have fully backuped our server, even if the time to do it is about 32 hours (24+8). On the week days the server and the lan are are not busy with backups between 6:00 AM and 10:00 PM
For servers that have large amounts of data, 200 GB+, you may see the following error with incremental backups
Aborting program. User refused to continue while asking: /mnt/smb/server.2activepr.ro/set0/full-20090404.1.dar is required for further operation, please provide the file.
To workaround set timeout to 23 hrs, this allows the backup to timeout cleanly, it will restart and attempt to complete the first full backup on the next run.
If you have more than one SME server on your LAN, you can use the same share (nfs or cifs) to backup all your servers. Each server will backup his data in a specific directory (the name of this directory is the FDQN of the server).
Backup disk size limits workaround
If having issues with the size of removable backup disks (eg 120Gb IDE on a workstation) versus the resultant backup data size (eg 120Gb of data compressing to approx 50Gb), then you can manually setup a cron job to delete the old backup file(s) before saving the new backup file(s).
The specific issue experienced was being able to get one full backup onto a disk, and a weeks worth of daily incrementals, but the next weekly full backup failed, due to the need to save the new backup in the tmp folder on the removable disk, before deleting the old backup files. There was not enough space on the disk (size) being used.
To workaround this, create a cron job and put it in /etc/cron.d with a script in /opt/scripts/XXX, which mounts the drive and deletes the old backup just before the new full backup commences. This will delete the old backup before the new backup commences, which is different to how the backup is designed to work by default. It is necessary to forgot the security of retaining the old backup until the new one has completed, in order to use the available hardware (smaller disk).
Create the deletion script
pico -w /opt/scripts/deletebkp1
Enter the following (using your share name, user, pasword & domain)
umount /mnt/smb /bin/mount -t cifs //stationXX/bkp1 /mnt/smb -o username=XXXXXX,password=XXXXXXXXXXXXX rm -f -R /mnt/smb/servername.yourdomain.com/ rm -f -R /mnt/smb/tmp_dir/
Then save & exit
Ctrl o Ctrl x
Create the cron job
pico -w /etc/cron.d/deletebkp1
Enter the following (setting the time & day to be just before your scheduled backup time), see below. The following values suit a scheduled full backup for 2.00am on Saturday morning (ie Friday evening), where the old backup gets deleted at 1:50am
50 1 * * 6 root . /opt/scripts/deletebkp1
Then save & exit
Ctrl o Ctrl x
Cron entries format is as follows:
+-----------------------Minute (0-59) | +-------------------Hour of Day (0-23) | | +---------------Day of Month (1-31) | | | +-----------Month of Year (1-12) | | | | +-------Day of Week (0=Sun,6=Sat) 50 1 * * 6 root . /opt/scripts/deletebkp1
Howto set the backup file slice size
The default slice or part setting is 700Mb (to suit CD's). The slice size can be changed for example to suit 4.7Gb DVD's, by making 3 parts fit on to a DVD, so the required slice size is 1529Mb (allowing for overheads & real data size).
Create the custom template fragment
mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/dar/DailyBackup.dcf cp /etc/e-smith/templates/etc/dar/DailyBackup.dcf/90slice /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/dar/DailyBackup.dcf
(the above cp command is all on one line)
Modify the file size & save
nano -w /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/dar/DailyBackup.dcf/90slice
Edit it to read like this
{
($backupwk{Slice} || '1529M') eq '1529M' ? "--slice 1529M\n" : "--slice $backup"
}
Then save & exit
Ctrl o Ctrl x
Then expand the template with
expand-template /etc/dar/DailyBackup.dcf
The next time the backup runs, the resultant backup file will be split into 1.529Gb part sizes.
Adding/Excluding Directories and Files from the backup list
Adding Files and Directories
The default backup does not include /opt
To add /opt to the backup inclusion list, create a custom template fragment and add opt to the list.
Create custom template fragment to add needed files and directories
mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/dar/DailyBackup.dcf pico -w /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/dar/DailyBackup.dcf/41go-into --go-into opt
Then expand the template
expand-template /etc/dar/DailyBackup.dcf
Check your backup (eg using the mc dar plugin) to see that /opt is now included.
It is also prudent to do a test full restore and verify that /opt (& all other backed up directories & files) are restored, as anticipated.
If something is wrong with your backup or restore procedures, then required files may not be backed up and restored, so it is wise to do a test full backup & restore to fully prove your procedures are working correctly.
Excluding Files and Directories
As an example let's say you have an ibay called 'mirror' you don't want backed-up. To exclude this ibay from the backup list, create a custom template fragment and exclude it from the the list.
Create custom template fragment to exclude the unneeded files and directories
mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/dar/DailyBackup.dcf pico -w /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/dar/DailyBackup.dcf/45prune --prune home/e-smith/files/ibays/mirror/cgi-bin --prune home/e-smith/files/ibays/mirror/files --prune home/e-smith/files/ibays/mirror/html
Then expand the template
expand-template /etc/dar/DailyBackup.dcf
Again, check your backup (eg using the mc dar plugin) to see that the ibay is not backed-up any more.
Use WOL to power on Workstation
Wake On Lan can be used to power up the backup target workstation before starting the backup.
To use WOL there simply needs to be a new variable added to the backupwk section of the configuration database, nothing else is required. This variable holds the MAC address of the target workstation, if the MAC address is 00:4E:89:F5:FD:2B use:
db configuration setprop backupwk SmbHostMAC 00:4E:89:F5:FD:2B
There is also the ability to specify how long to wait between the WOL packet being sent and attempting to start the backup process. The default wait time is 300 seconds, this can be varied via another configuration database setting. It is recommended to not set the wait period below 300 seconds. To set the wait time to 600 seconds:
db configuration setprop backupwk SmbHostDelay 600
The target system must support, and be set up to respond to, the WOL "magic packets". The network infrastructure must also support WOL packets. WOL should work across the local network without problem. WOL packets are not routeable so it won't work across the internet without additional support from hardware and/or software such as a VPN tunnel. Getting WOL to work across the internet is beyond the scope of this documentation but there are plenty of resources available elsewhere. Most wireless connected devices do not work with WOL.
Note that there is no checking that the supplied MAC address is the correct one for the IP address/hostname of the target workstation. MAC address's are effectively static but IP address's/hostnames can change particularly if the target gets its IP address via DHCP. It is quite possible to have the correct target woken up and be ready but the backup to fail because the IP address has changed. However SME's DHCP server very rarely changes the IP address of a given MAC address.
To stop using WOL simply delete the SmbHostMAC variable:
db configuration delprop backupwk SmbHostMAC
and to be tidy if the optional delay parameter has been set:
db configuration delprop backupwk SmbHostDelay
How to start a one-off backup
To backup up to workstation as a one-off, not a scheduled event, run
/sbin/e-smith/do_backupwk
However note that scheduled backups must be enabled for the above command to work.
Some notes
Some things to keep in mind when using SME-Server backup:
Backup file slices are NOT autonomous
The catalogue of the contents of the backup is put in the last slice. If for some reason the last slice can not be written (e.g. backup medium is full or network failure), is lost or corrupt, the slices already saved are useless.
NFS
27/06/2012 - With the current version of SME Version 8 and 9 it would appear that NFS is not installed by default.
To enable backup via nfs you will need to install nfs-utils from base :
yum install nfs-utils
For further information please see this bug http://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7006
- For a SME server all backups sets are put in a directory which has the FQDN of the server as a name, ie hostname.domain/
- All backups of a set are put in a subdirectory with the name of the set, ie. hostname.domain/set0/, hostname.domain/set1/, etc.
- During a backup session, all session files are temporary put in the directory hostname.domain/tmp_dir/
- In a set the full backup is named full-yyyymmdd
- In a set the incremental backups are named inc1-yyyymmdd, inc2-yyyymmdd, etc.
- In a full backup the files (slices) are named full-yyyymmdd.1.dar, full-yyyymmdd.2.dar, etc.
- In an incremental backup the files (slices) are named incn-yyyymmdd.1.dar, incn-yyyymmdd.2.dar, etc.
All backup files have allways distinct names. If the backup files are moved elsewhere for archiving, you must recreate the directory structure before doing a restore with the server manager.
cifs - mount error 20 = Not a directory
Some network drives don't function correctly with Backup with DAR and the cifs file system. The mount command returns "mount error 20 = Not a directory". See Bug 4923.
This can be worked around by adding the "nounix" option to the mount command in the /etc/e-smith/events/actions/workstation-backup-dar file.
Edit the above file and find the line:
$err = qx(/bin/mount -t cifs "$smbhost:$smbshare" $mntdir -o user=$login,pass=$password 2>&1);
and change it to:
$err = qx(/bin/mount -t cifs "$smbhost:$smbshare" $mntdir -o nounix,user=$login,pass=$password 2>&1);
Save the file.
Manually restoring from dar archive created by e-smith-backup
Restores can be done for:
-the entire system.
-a selected file only.
-a selected directory and all of its contents.
The entire system and a selected file only can be done through the server-manager.
The selected directory can be done via shell. (You will have to adjust for your particular situation.)
First, MOUNT THE BACKUP DRIVE (if required):
mount /dev/sdc1 /media/BackupDrive1/
Then, RESTORE THE DIRECTORY:
dar -x /media/BackupDrive1/server.domain.local/set2/full-201408092200 -N -R / -w -g home/e-smith/files/ibays/share_data/files
You may also have to RESTORE ANY INCREMENTS:
dar -x /media/BackupDrive1/server.domain.local/set2/inc-001-201408102200.1.dar -N -R / -w -g home/e-smith/files/ibays/share_data/files dar -x /media/BackupDrive1/server.domain.local/set2/inc-002-201408112200.1.dar -N -R / -w -g home/e-smith/files/ibays/share_data/files dar -x /media/BackupDrive1/server.domain.local/set2/inc-003-201408122200.1.dar -N -R / -w -g home/e-smith/files/ibays/share_data/files dar -x /media/BackupDrive1/server.domain.local/set2/inc-004-201408132200.1.dar -N -R / -w -g home/e-smith/files/ibays/share_data/files