Backupninja provides a centralized way to configure and schedule many different backup utilities. It allows for secure, remote, incremental filesytem backup (via rdiff-backup), compressed incremental data, backup system and hardware info, encrypted remote backups (via duplicity), safe backup of MySQL/PostgreSQL databases, subversion or trac repositories, burn CD/DVDs or create ISOs, incremental rsync with hardlinking.

This walkthrough will describe how to setup Backupninja together with rdiff-backup in unattended mode.

The two partners in this setup are server.example.net and backup.example.net. The former should backup its data nightly to the latter. The user service will be the backup system account using password-less ssh access. The target directory is /data/backup, so the complete backup target address in ssh notation is service@backup.example.net:/data/backup.

backup.example.net:~$ useradd -m service 
backup.example.net:~$ passwd service 
                      # ^^ only required for copying over ssh public identities; can be disabled later: 
                      backup.example.net:~$ passwd --lock service

rdiff-backup requires pyxattr >=0.4 (looks like)

• On debian lenny, python-pyxattr has Version: 0.4.0-1, while python-xattr has Version: 0.4-4

  backup.example.net:~$ aptitude install backupninja rdiff-backup python-pyxattr

• On debian etch, python-pyxattr has Version: 0.2.1-1.1, so use python-xattr 0.4-4~bpo40+1 from etch-backports:

  backup.example.net:~$ aptitude install python-xattr -t etch-backports

backup.example.net:~$ mkdir -p /data/backup/{customer}/server.example.net/rdiff 
backup.example.net:~$ chown -R service:service /data/backup/{customer}/server.example.net/rdiff

• setup backup tools

  server.example.net:~$ aptitude install backupninja rdiff-backup python-pyxattr debconf-utils hwinfo

  pyxattr >=0.4 required (so on debian etch): (see above “target: install backup software”)

  server.example.net:~$ aptitude install python-xattr -t etch-backports

• create user service and its keypair, copy public key over to backup target

  server.example.net:~$ useradd -m service 
  server.example.net:~$ su - service 
  service@server.example.net:~$ ssh-keygen 
  service@server.example.net:~$ ssh-copy-id service@backup.example.net 
  service@server.example.net:~$ logout

• backupninja: base configuration

  server.example.net:/etc/backupninja.conf

  reportemail = root@example.net 
  when = everyday at 00:45

• backupninja: handler setup

  server.example.net:~$ cp /usr/share/doc/backupninja/examples/example.sys /etc/backup.d/10.sys 
  server.example.net:~$ cp /usr/share/doc/backupninja/examples/example.mysql /etc/backup.d/20.mysql 
  server.example.net:~$ cp /usr/share/doc/backupninja/examples/example.ldap /etc/backup.d/30.ldap 
  server.example.net:~$ cp /usr/share/doc/backupninja/examples/example.rdiff /etc/backup.d/90.rdiff 
  server.example.net:~$ chmod go-r /etc/backup.d/*

• backupninja: unattended backup-rdiff

  server.example.net:/etc/backup.d/90.rdiff

  ... 
  options = --force --remote-schema 'ssh -i /home/service/.ssh/id_rsa -C %s rdiff-backup --server' 
  ... 
  #label = thishostname 
  ... 
  include = /var/mail 
  ... 
  [dest] 
  directory = /data/backup/{customer}/server.example.net/rdiff 
  host = backup.example.net 
  user = service    
  sshoptions = -i /home/service/.ssh/id_rsa

• backupninja: force testrun

  server.example.net:~$ backupninja --test --now 
  server.example.net:~$ screen -S backup 
  server.example.net:~$ backupninja --debug --now

  detach from screen: Ctrl+A, D

hypervisor is the machine backup.example.net is running on. We'll mount another partition with plenty of backup space. Here's how (LVM + Xen):

hypervisor:~$ lvcreate -L 250G vg0 -n backup-data 
hypervisor:~$ mkfs.ext3 /dev/vg0/backup-data 
 
hypervisor:~$ nano /etc/xen/backup.example.net.cfg

/etc/xen/backup.example.net.cfg

... 
disk        = [ 
                  ... 
                  'phy:vg0/backup-data,sda6,w', 
              ] 
...

backup.example.net:~$ mkdir /data 
backup.example.net:~$ nano /etc/fstab

/etc/fstab

... 
/dev/sda6 /data    ext3 noatime,nodiratime,errors=remount-ro 0 1

backup.example.net:~$ halt 
hypervisor:~$ xm create /etc/xen/backup.example.net.cfg

Exclude backup path from being scanned by “locate” & Co.:

backup.example.net:~$ nano /etc/updatedb.findutils.cron.local 
PRUNEPATHS="/data/backup"