Rdiff-backup

Simple automatic incremental daily backup using rdiff-backup

On server to backup

apt-get install rdiff-backup python-xattr python-pylibacl sudo
mkdir /var/backups/.ssh

add to /etc/sudoers

backup ALL = NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/rdiff-backup --server --restrict-read-only /

On backup server

The script

Put the backup script on /srv/backups/rdiff-backups/$SERVER_TO_BACKUP-rdiff-backup.sh

SERVER_TO_BACKUP=hostname_here

rdiff-backup \
 --print-statistics \
 --remote-schema "ssh -i /srv/backups/rdiff-backups/id_rsa-$SERVER_TO_BACKUP -C %s 'sudo /usr/bin/rdiff-backup --server --restrict-read-only /'" \
 --preserve-numerical-ids \
 --verbosity 4 \
 --force \
 --include /etc \
 --include /home \
 --exclude / \
 backup@$SERVER_TO_BACKUP::/ /srv/backups/rdiff-backups/$SERVER_TO_BACKUP

rdiff-backup --force --remove-older-than 4W /srv/backups/rdiff-backups/$SERVER_TO_BACKUP

Run as root

SERVER_TO_BACKUP=SERVER_TO_BACKUP

mkdir -p /srv/backups/rdiff-backups/$SERVER_TO_BACKUP 
apt-get install rdiff-backup python-xattr python-pylibacl
ssh-keygen -t rsa -N "" -f /srv/backups/rdiff-backups/id_rsa-$SERVER_TO_BACKUP
cat /srv/backups/rdiff-backups/id_rsa-$SERVER_TO_BACKUP.pub | ssh root@$SERVER_TO_BACKUP 'cat - > /var/backups/.ssh/authorized_keys'

chown root:root /srv/backups/rdiff-backups/id_rsa-$SERVER_TO_BACKUP
chmod 600 /srv/backups/rdiff-backups/id_rsa-$SERVER_TO_BACKUP
chown root:root /srv/backups/rdiff-backups/$SERVER_TO_BACKUP-rdiff-backup.sh
chmod 750 /srv/backups/rdiff-backups/$SERVER_TO_BACKUP-rdiff-backup.sh

echo "0 4 * * * root /srv/backups/rdiff-backups/$SERVER_TO_BACKUP-rdiff-backup.sh" > /etc/cron.d/$SERVER_TO_BACKUP-rdiff-backup
/etc/init.d/cron restart

Backup etch from lenny

Due to incompatible rdiff-backup version to backup Etch server using rdiff-backup on lenny you need to install a backported version on Etch server, add to /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://www.backports.org/debian/ etch-backports main contrib non-free

and run

apt-get install debian-backports-keyring
apt-get update
apt-get -t etch-backports install rdiff-backup