Welcome to rdiff-backup-tools!


Rdiff-backup-tools is a set of simple and effective bash 
scripts that vaguely emulate EMC's Legato NetWorker.


Summary:
--------

 rdiff-backup-tools.conf - define save sets etc
 rdiff-backup-save - do saves 
 rdiff-backup-info - report details about saves
 rdiff-backup-recover - do recovers
 rdiff-backup-report - report save summaries
 rdiff-backup-expire - remove old saves
 rdiff-backup-tools.cron - cron script for automating saves
 rdiff-backup-tools.logrotate - logrotate the log file


Requirements:
-------------

This is tested on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but it should run
on any Unix/Linux system with a full rsync install (e.g the
librsync and librsync-devel RPMs) and rdiff-backup.  For remote
"client to server" backups, you can use rdiff-backup-save and
rdiff-backup-recover, but you must SSH to the server to use
the other tools.


Install:
--------

sudo make install
 

Quick Start:
------------

## Read over the config...
more /usr/local/etc/rdiff-backup-tools.conf
notice how "Source[1]=/etc", 
"Destination[1]=/tmp/save/etc" and
"Expire[1]=1Y" are set

## Setup and show defined save sets...
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/sbin 
sudo mkdir -p /tmp/save/etc /tmp/recover
sudo rdiff-backup-info list

## Save with debug output...
sudo rdiff-backup-save --debug

## View the details...
sudo rdiff-backup-report

## View most recent summary and the log...
sudo more /var/log/rdiff-backup.summary 
sudo more /var/log/rdiff-backup.log

## Get info on /etc/passwd...
sudo rdiff-backup-info files | grep /etc/passwd 
sudo rdiff-backup-info ls | grep /etc/passwd 

## Recover the most recent /etc/passwd...
sudo cp -p /tmp/save/etc/passwd /etc/passwd.R

## Second save... including a new file...
sudo touch /etc/frobnitz.conf
sudo rdiff-backup-save
sudo rdiff-backup-info changed 

## Third backup... removes the new file...
sudo rm /etc/frobnitz.conf
sudo rdiff-backup-save
sudo rdiff-backup-report
sudo rdiff-backup-info changed 

## Fourth backup is a no-op...
sudo rdiff-backup-save 
sudo rdiff-backup-report # notice just current mirror updates

## Recover the frobnitz.conf file... 

# Note: the following is an awkward yet definitive
# way to recover the second-most save.  Usually
# one would just use a relative time like...
# "sudo rdiff-backup-recover --as-of 7D ..."
secondmost=`sudo rdiff-backup-report | tail -4 | head -1 | cut -c5-28`

# Note: rdiff-backup requires that all of /etc 
# gets restored...
sudo rdiff-backup-recover --debug --as-of "$secondmost" /etc /tmp/recover/etc 
ls -l /tmp/recover/etc/frobnitz.conf
 

Configuration:
--------------
  
vi /usr/local/etc/rdiff-backup-tools.conf


Operation:
----------

## set up automatic log rotation....
sudo cp rdiff-backup.logrotate  /etc/logrotate.d/rdiff-backup

## set up automatic backups...
sudo cp rdiff-backup.cron /etc/cron.daily/

## run (test) backups now...
sudo at now
/etc/cron.daily/rdiff-backup.cron
^d

read root's mail, after 4am tomorrow.

and, also, refer back to the Quick Start.


steve rader
<rader@physics.wisc.edu>