Howto set up auto backup of your system with backup-manager

Every Linux newbies in some part of his/her adventure will get to the part where backup is needed. In this howto we will explain the basics of the backup, why a backup is needed and the easiest way to backup your system.

Linux's configuration files are plain text human readable files. That means that if you have configured some application or program you have done that through editing a text file most likely ending with ".conf". Backing up your system will help you in a lot of ways: due to a program/system failure, human failre of hardware failure. Let's imagine something happens to your Linux machine. Getting new machine up and running will take you about an hour, but what about all the programs and configuration files that you have edited manually. You will have to do this all over again, unless you have backed up your system. Then restoring will be easy as executing several commands. In this howto we will install and set automatic backing up with backup-manager.

NOTE: backup-manager is available from the official source of almost every distribution :
Ubuntu/Debian : apt-get install <package>
Gentoo : emerge <package>
Sabayon : equo install <package>
ArchLinux : pacman <package>
and so on ... it depends on the distribution
If not let's compile the tarball:

1. Download
$ wget http://www.backup-manager.org/download/backup-manager-0.6.3.tar.gz
At this time this is the latest version. You can always check for new releases on the Official Website

2. Extract the tarball
$ tar vfx backup-manager-0.6.3.tar.gz

3. Enter (use "cd") the directory
$ cd backup-manager-0.6.3

4. Install
backup-manager-0.6.3 ~ $ sudo make && sudo make install
"sudo" is being used due to permission problems

Now is time for the configuration file. If you try to start it without configuration file you will end up seeing error like this :
backup-manager-0.6.3 ~ $ sudo /usr/sbin/backup-manager
/usr/sbin/backup-manager: line 135: /etc/backup-manager.conf: No such file or directory

A sample configuration file is located at : /usr/share/backup-manager/backup-manager.conf.tpl
Let's copy it :
backup-manager-0.6.3 ~ $ cp /usr/share/backup-manager/backup-manager.conf.tpl /etc/backup-manager.conf

Now edit /etc/backup-manager.conf according to your needs. The sample configuration file is pretty well explained itself but if you haven't understand something,
Example :
Specified directory where the archives will be stored :
export BM_REPOSITORY_ROOT="/home/kickar/backup/"

For security reasons the archives MUST be readable/writeable to a specific user/group:
export BM_REPOSITORY_USER="user"
export BM_REPOSITORY_GROUP="users"

We want the name of the archives to be long type so there are no confusions :
export BM_TARBALL_NAMEFORMAT="long"

tar.gz is the most common and secure archive type :
export BM_TARBALL_FILETYPE="tar.gz"

We want /etc and /var/www (web server) to be backed up :
BM_TARBALL_TARGETS[0]="/etc"
BM_TARBALL_TARGETS[1]="/var/www"

We want master tarball every week :
export BM_TARBALLINC_MASTERDATETYPE="weekly"
on monday :
export BM_TARBALLINC_MASTERDATEVALUE="1"

We want to backup all the mysq databases :
export BM_MYSQL_DATABASES="__ALL__"
export BM_MYSQL_ADMINLOGIN="root"
export BM_MYSQL_ADMINPASS="youPass"

There are also other options that will let you transfer the backup over the network via ssh, but a better decision is a second HDD conected to the same machine.Now save the configuration file. and lets start it to see is it all good

~ $ sudo /usr/sbin/backup-manager
If you see no output everything is fine! Check the archive directory that you specified just to make surethe archives are all there.

Integrating to CRON is pretty easy. You will have to create very simple script that calls backup-manager. We suggest this script to be in /etc/cron.daily , because it handles out daily archives:
~ $ sudo su

Enter /etc/cron.daily directory :
# cd /etc/cron.daily

Create a simple bash script called "backup-manager"
# nano backup-manager

#!/bin/sh
/usr/sbin/backup-manager

Save and exit... and thats it you are all set!
If you have any questions please refer to our FORUM

de.li.cio.us