Author: | Amand Tihon |
---|---|
Contact: | <amand.tihon@alrj.org> |
Version: | 1.2 |
Date: | Jan 9, 2009 |
Copyright: | GNU GPL, see copyright file. |
Table of contents
Brioche is yet another backup shell script. Its main features are
Large numbers of backup solutions are freely available today, but when playing with incremental or differential backups, most of them rely on some filesystem capabilities, like hard-linking. If the only remote location available to store the backups is an FTP server, this is not a solution. Brioche relies on GNU tar's --listed-incremental option to create real differential [1] archives.
A second feature that makes Brioche interresting is the ability to use LVM snapshots. In the case of a Xen setup where the domUs use logical volumes as partitions, Brioche is able to backup everything from the dom0.
[1] | Each differential backup is based upon the last full backup, unlike incremental, which are based upon the last (full or incremental) backup. |
You can download the tarball from http://www.alrj.org/projects/brioche or get the latest development version with the following git command:
git clone http://git.alrj.org/git/brioche.git
A gitweb interface is also available at http://git.alrj.org/
Brioche relies on a few easily available free software :
See the References section for links to the aforementioned softwares.
Copy the three files brioche, brioche.conf and briochetab where you like, and set the CONFIG_FILE variable in the brioche script accordingly. If needed, run chmod +x /path/to/brioche. In a typical setup, the brioche script will be put in /usr/local/bin with the other two files under /etc.
Edit the file brioche.conf to suit your needs. Each option is commented inline and will be detailed here.
The backups are defined in the file birochetab. Here is a typical example for a Xen config where cottman is the dom0 and syrtis, kadarin, valeron are domUs:
# Partition or LV Snapshot Host name Volume name # --------------------------------------------------------------- / no cottman root /usr no cottman usr /dev/vg00/valeron-root yes valeron root /dev/vg00/kadarin-root yes kadarin root /dev/vg00/kadarin-home yes kadarin home /dev/vg00/syrtis-root yes syrtis root /dev/vg00/syrtis-home yes syrtis home /dev/vg00/syrtis-usr yes syrtis usr /dev/vg00/syrtis-var yes syrtis var
Blank lines, or lines beginning with # are ignored.
The first column defines the directory or logical volume to backup. In this example,the first two lines are plain directories, while the other ones point to LVM devices.
The second column specify if the backup should be taken from an LVM snapshot or not. It must be set to "no" for the backup of a directory and to "yes" for the backup of a logical volume.
The last two columns are more or less cosmetic, and define where the archive files will be stored, and how they'll be named. The destination directory will be created under the REPODIR, and its name will be the value on the third column. Inside this directory, archive files will be named from the value given in the fourth column. Grouping by domUs' hostnames is only a suggestion, it can be completely different and adapted to suit your needs.
For instance, a full and a differential backup for the host valeron of the previous example would lead to the following structure:
user:/REPODIR$ ls -l valeron/ total 356544 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 363545613 Jan 3 03:10 root.full.20090103.tar.bz2 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 504722 Jan 3 03:10 root.full.snar -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 504725 Jan 4 04:06 root.incr.20090104.snar -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 160542 Jan 4 04:06 root.incr.20090104.tar.bz2
WARNING ! In case your REPODIR is not on a distinct device, it will be included in the backup if you've included the device in your briochetab. To avoid this issue, you can either exclude it explicitely by adding an "--exclude=..." option in TAR_OPTS, or simply specify in your briochetab file which directories need to be archived. |
With the help of lftp, Brioche is able to store an history of backups on an FTP server. This is mainly usefull when no other distant repository is available. If possible, consider using an CIFS, NFS, sshfs or any other kind of remote mountpoint for your REPODIR.
The archives present in the local REPODIR will be mirrored to the FTP server after each backup, be it a full or a differential one.
Since there is no way to hide the credentials if they are passed to lftp on the command line, the authentication relies on your .netrc file. See man netrc(5) for more information. In the home directory of the user that runs Brioche (typically root's), create the .netrc file with the following lines:
machine ftp.example.com login username password SikRet
Don't forget to secure it with chmod 600 .netrc or lftp will refuse to use it. The machine name must match the FTP_HOST configuration directive in brioche.conf.
On the FTP server, Brioche will keep a configurable amount of runs. Each run consists of a full backup and all the differential backups that are based on it. Before doing a full backup, Brioche will rotate the runs and keep only the configured number of older backups. The current backups can always be found under /FTP_DIR/hostname/latest/. Older ones will be under /FTP_DIR/hostname/run-X/ with X equal to 1 for the previous run, 2 for the one before and so forth, up to the value of FTP_KEEP.
Here's what happens during the rotation:
Brioche understands the following arguments:
-f, --full | Do a full backup (by default, brioche will try to do a differential). |
-h, --help | Show a very limited help. |
When everything is ready, execute the brioche script as root. The script is pretty verbose, so don't panic if you see lots of lines scrolling in your terminal. By default, Brioche will try to make differential backups, but will gracefully fall back and do a full backup if none is available.
If all is fine, it can be added in the system crontab. Here's a suggestion for weekly full backup on Sunday, with differential during the weekdays:
# Daily incremental backup 30 3 * * 1-6 /usr/local/bin/brioche > /var/log/backup.`dow`.log 2>&1 # Weekly full backup on Sunday 30 3 * * 0 /usr/local/bin/brioche -f > /var/log/backup.`dow`.log 2>&1
The output of the script will be saved in /var/log/backup.DOW.log with DOW being the abbreviated day of the week (see man date(1) for the format). The dow bash script is provided alongside Brioche.
There's no bugtracker for this project, your bug reports should be sent to the author : Amand Tihon <amand.tihon@alrj.org>. Please include as much information as possible in your report.