I use rdiff-backup on all my servers and desktop machines, including routers, laptops, etc. to make sure all data and configuration files are safe. To this end, especially for Linux/unix hosts, I’ve created a Bash script which takes care of process locking and excluding files which shouldn’t go into the archive. In hopes it’ll be useful to someone, you can download it, or view it:
#!/bin/bash # VERSION=0.11 # 2011/09/05 # # Please do not put spaces in the name of this script, # the lock file is based on $0 and spaces break things. # # You will want something like this in ~/.ssh/config, where the virtual host # name corresponds to the REMOTEHOST variable below: # # Host my-backup # Hostname backupserver.my.lan # User backup # Identityfile /root/.ssh/id_rsa_my_backup # Compression yes # Protocol 2 # # # # Changelog: # # 2011/09/05 - Aaron Ten Clay # Corrected output redirection and added filtering for harmless error messages # # 2011/04/10 - Aaron Ten Clay # Updated order of include/exclude arguments to capture kernel config # Added output filtering via Grep to ignore SpecialFileError messages # # 2009/07/20 - Aaron Ten Clay # Added rudimentary version checking # # 2009/02/21 - Aaron Ten Clay # Fixed spelling error # # 2009/01/20 - Aaron Ten Clay # Repaired grammar in error messages # # 2009/01/17 - Aaron Ten Clay # Repaired remote version error message # # Quick customization parameters HOSTNAME="your.host.name" LOCALVERSION=$(rdiff-backup --version) REMOTEPATH="/backups/${HOSTNAME}/root" REMOTEHOST="my-backup" # Main script function check_script_version { latest=$(wget --no-check-certificate -qO- "http://10.43.101.63:24469/projects/rdiff-backup-wrapper-script/version_check.php?version=${VERSION}") if [[ "x${latest}" == "x" ]]; then echo "Notice: Version check failed" else if [[ "${latest}" != "latest" ]]; then echo -e "Notice: A newer version (${latest}) of this script is available at http://10.43.101.63:24469/projects/rdiff-backup-wrapper-script\n" fi fi } function sigcaught () { rm -f "$lockfile" echo "Error: caught interrupt" >&2 exit 2 } # Here begins the actual work # Exit if using uninitialized variable set -o nounset check_script_version remoteversion=$(ssh ${REMOTEHOST} rdiff-backup --version) if [[ "${LOCALVERSION}" != "${remoteversion}" ]]; then echo "Error: Remote version (${remoteversion}) differs from local version (${LOCALVERSION}), aborting" >&2 exit 1 fi lockfile="/tmp/$(basename $0).pid" if ( set -o noclobber; echo "$" > "$lockfile") 2> /dev/null; then trap sigcaught INT TERM EXIT rdiff-backup \ --exclude /home/shares \ --exclude /dev \ --exclude /media \ --exclude /mnt \ --exclude /opt \ --exclude /proc \ --exclude /sys \ --exclude /tmp \ --exclude /usr/portage \ --exclude /usr/tmp \ --include /usr/src/linux/.config \ --exclude /usr/src \ --exclude /var/cache \ --exclude /var/log \ --exclude /var/tmp \ --exclude /var/lib/vmware \ --exclude /var/lib/gentoo \ $* \ "/" \ "${REMOTEHOST}::${REMOTEPATH}" \ 2>&1 \ | grep -v "^SpecialFileError .* Socket error: AF_UNIX path too long
quot; \ | grep -v "^UpdateError .* Updated mirror temp file .* does not match source
quot; \ | grep -v "^ListError .* No such file or directory: .*
quot; rm -f "$lockfile" trap - INT TERM EXIT else echo "Error: Failed to acquire lockfile: $lockfile, held by PID $(cat $lockfile)" >&2 fi