[10:05] hydrogenium:ccollect-0.4# ./tools/config-pre-0.4-to-0.4.sh /etc/ccollect
(pseudo) incremental backup with different exclude lists using hardlinks and rsync
ccollect is a backup utility written in the sh-scripting language. It does not depend on a specific shell, only /bin/sh needs to be bourne shell compatible (like dash, ksh, zsh, bash, …).
ccollect was successfully tested on the following platforms:
FreeBSD on amd64/i386
GNU/Linux on amd64/arm/hppa/i386/ppc
Mac OS X 10.5
NetBSD on alpha/amd64/i386/sparc/sparc64
OpenBSD on amd64
It should run on any Unix that supports rsync and has a POSIX-compatible bourne shell. If your platform is not listed above and you have it successfully running, please drop me a mail.
While considering the design of ccollect, I thought about enabling backup to remote hosts. Though this sounds like a nice feature ("Backup my notebook to the server now."), in my opinion it is a bad idea to backup to a remote host.
But as more and more people requested this feature, it was implemented, so you have the choice whether you want to use it or not.
If you want to backup TO a remote host, you have to loosen security on it.
Imagine the following situation: You backup your farm of webservers TO a backup host somewhere else. Now one of your webservers which has access to your backup host gets compromised.
Your backup server will be compromised, too.
And the attacker will have access to all data on the other webservers.
Think of it the other way round: The backup server (now behind a firewall, not accessable from outside) connects to the webservers and pulls the data from them. If someone gets access to one of the webservers, this person will perhaps not even see your machine. If the attacker sees connections from a host to the compromised machine, she will not be able to log in on the backup machine. All other backups are still secure.
Old: "<interval name> [args] <sources to backup>"
New: "[args] <interval name> <sources to backup>"
If you did not use arguments (most people do not), nothing will change for you.
Old: Only incomplete backups from the current interval have been removed
New: All incomplete backups are deleted
Old: no support
New: Options in $CCOLLECT_CONF/defaults are used as defaults (see below)
Before 0.7 it was a (link to a) directory
As of 0.7 it is a textfile containing the destination
You can update your configuration using tools/config-pre-0.7-to-0.7.sh.
As of 0.7 it is possible to backup to hosts (see section remote_host below).
Before 0.6 it was whitespace delimeted
As of 0.6 it is newline seperated (so you can pass whitespaces to rsync)
You can update your configuration using tools/config-pre-0.6-to-0.6.sh.
Before 0.6: "date +%Y-%m-%d-%H%M"
As of 0.6: "date +%Y%m%d-%H%M" (better readable, date is closer together)
For the second change there is no updated needed, as XXXX- is always before XXXXX (- comes before digit).
Not a real incompatibilty, but seems to fit in this section:
PaX
bc
anymore!
Since ccollect 0.4 there are several incompatibilities with earlier versions:
pax (Posix) is now required, cp -al (GNU specific) is removed
"interval" was written with two l (ell), which is wrong in English
Changed the name of backup directories, removed the colon in the interval
ccollect will now exit when preexec returns non-zero
ccollect now reports when postexec returns non-zero
You can convert your old configuration directory using config-pre-0.4-to-0.4.sh, which can be found in the tools/ subdirectory:
[10:05] hydrogenium:ccollect-0.4# ./tools/config-pre-0.4-to-0.4.sh /etc/ccollect
For those who do not want to read the whole long document:
# get latest ccollect tarball from http://www.nico.schottelius.org/software/ccollect/
# replace value for CCV with the current version
export CCV=0.8.1
#
# replace 'wget' with 'fetch' on bsd
#
holen=wget
"$holen" http://www.nico.schottelius.org/software/ccollect/ccollect-${CCV}.tar.bz2
# extract the tarball, change to the newly created directory
tar -xvjf ccollect-${CCV}.tar.bz2
cd ccollect-${CCV}
# create mini-configuration
# first create directory structure
mkdir -p miniconfig/defaults/intervals
mkdir miniconfig/sources
# create sample intervals
echo 2 > miniconfig/defaults/intervals/testinterval
echo 3 > miniconfig/defaults/intervals/testinterval2
# create destination directory, where the backups will be kept
mkdir ~/DASI
# create sample source, which will be saved
mkdir miniconfig/sources/testsource
# We will save '/bin' to the directory '~/DASI'
echo '/bin' > miniconfig/sources/testsource/source
# configure ccollect to use ~/DASI as destination
echo ~/DASI > miniconfig/sources/testsource/destination
# We want to see what happens and also a small summary at the end
touch miniconfig/sources/testsource/verbose
touch miniconfig/sources/testsource/summary
echo "do the backup, twice"
CCOLLECT_CONF=./miniconfig ./ccollect.sh testinterval testsource
CCOLLECT_CONF=./miniconfig ./ccollect.sh testinterval testsource
echo "the third time ccollect begins to remove old backups"
echo -n "Hit enter to see it"
read
CCOLLECT_CONF=./miniconfig ./ccollect.sh testinterval testsource
echo "Now we add another interval, ccollect should clone from existent ones"
echo -n "Hit enter to see it"
read
CCOLLECT_CONF=./miniconfig ./ccollect.sh testinterval2 testsource
echo "Let's see how much space we used with two backups and compare it to /bin"
du -s ~/DASI /bin
# report success
echo "Please report success using ./tools/report_success.sh"
Cutting and pasting the complete section above to your shell will result in the download of ccollect, the creation of a sample configuration and the execution of some backups.
For the installation you need at least
the latest ccollect package (http://www.nico.schottelius.org/software/ccollect/)
either cp and chmod or install
for more comfort: make
for rebuilding the generated documentation: additionally asciidoc
date
rsync
ssh (if you want to use rsync over ssh, which is recommened for security)
Either type make install or simply copy it to a directory in your $PATH and execute chmod 0755 /path/to/ccollect.sh. If you like to use the new management scripts (available since 0.6), copy the following scripts to a directory in $PATH:
tools/ccollect_add_source.sh
tools/ccollect_analyse_logs.sh.sh
tools/ccollect_delete_source.sh
tools/ccollect_list_intervals.sh
tools/ccollect_logwrapper.sh
After having installed and used ccollect, report success using ./tools/report_success.sh.
For configuration aid have a look at the above mentioned tools, which can assist you quite well. When you are successfully using ccollect, I would be happy if you add a link to your website, stating "I backup with ccollect", which points to the ccollect homepage. So more people now about ccollect, use it and improve it. You can also report success using tools/report_success.sh.
ccollect looks for its configuration in /etc/ccollect or, if set, in the directory specified by the variable $CCOLLECT_CONF:
# sh-compatible (dash, zsh, mksh, ksh, bash, ...) $ CCOLLECT_CONF=/your/config/dir ccollect.sh ... # csh $ ( setenv CCOLLECT_CONF /your/config/dir ; ccollect.sh ... )
When you start ccollect, you have to specify in which interval to backup (daily, weekly, yearly; you can specify the names yourself, see below) and which sources to backup (or -a to backup all sources).
The interval specifies how many backups are kept.
There are also some self-explanatory parameters you can pass to ccollect, simply use ccollect.sh --help for info.
The general configuration can be found in $CCOLLECT_CONF/defaults or /etc/ccollect/defaults. All options specified there are generally valid for all source definitions, although the values can be overwritten in the source configuration.
All configuration entries are plain-text files (use UTF-8 for non-ascii characters).
The interval definition can be found in $CCOLLECT_CONF/defaults/intervals/ or /etc/ccollect/defaults/intervals. Each file in this directory specifies an interval. The name of the file is the same as the name of the interval: intervals/'<interval name>'.
The content of this file should be a single line containing a number. This number defines how many versions of this interval are kept.
Example:
[10:23] zaphodbeeblebrox:ccollect-0.2% ls -l conf/defaults/intervals/ insgesamt 12 -rw-r--r-- 1 nico users 3 2005-12-08 10:24 daily -rw-r--r-- 1 nico users 3 2005-12-08 11:36 monthly -rw-r--r-- 1 nico users 2 2005-12-08 11:36 weekly [10:23] zaphodbeeblebrox:ccollect-0.2% cat conf/defaults/intervals/* 28 12 4
This means to keep 28 daily backups, 12 monthly backups and 4 weekly.
If you add $CCOLLECT_CONF/defaults/pre_exec or /etc/ccollect/defaults/pre_exec (same with post_exec), ccollect will start pre_exec before the whole backup process and post_exec after backup of all sources is done.
If pre_exec exits with a non-zero return code, the whole backup process will be aborted.
The pre_exec and post_exec script can access the following exported variables:
INTERVAL: the interval selected (daily)
no_sources: number of sources to backup (2)
source_$no: name of the source, $no starts at 0 ($source_0)
The following example describes how to report free disk space in human readable format before and after the whole backup process:
[13:00] hydrogenium:~# mkdir -p /etc/ccollect/defaults/ [13:00] hydrogenium:~# echo '#!/bin/sh' > /etc/ccollect/defaults/pre_exec [13:01] hydrogenium:~# echo '' >> /etc/ccollect/defaults/pre_exec [13:01] hydrogenium:~# echo 'df -h' >> /etc/ccollect/defaults/pre_exec [13:01] hydrogenium:~# chmod 0755 /etc/ccollect/defaults/pre_exec [13:01] hydrogenium:~# ln -s /etc/ccollect/defaults/pre_exec /etc/ccollect/defaults/post_exec
Each source configuration exists in $CCOLLECT_CONF/sources/$name or /etc/ccollect/sources/$name.
The name you choose for the subdirectory describes the source.
Each source contains at least the following files:
source (a text file containing the rsync compatible path to backup)
destination (a text file containing the directory we should backup to)
Additionally a source may have the following files:
pre_exec program to execute before backing up this source
post_exec program to execute after backing up this source
verbose whether to be verbose (passes -v to rsync)
very_verbose be very verbose (mkdir -v, rm -v and rsync -vv)
summary create a transfer summary when rsync finished
exclude exclude list for rsync. newline seperated list.
rsync_options extra options for rsync. newline seperated list.
delete_incomplete delete incomplete backups
remote_host host to backup to
rsync_failure_codes list of rsync exit codes that indicate complete failure
mtime Sort backup directories based on their modification time
quiet_if_down Suppress error messages if source is not connectable
Example:
[10:47] zaphodbeeblebrox:ccollect-0.2% ls -l conf/sources/testsource2 insgesamt 12 lrwxrwxrwx 1 nico users 20 2005-11-17 16:44 destination -rw-r--r-- 1 nico users 62 2005-12-07 17:43 exclude drwxr-xr-x 2 nico users 4096 2005-12-07 17:38 intervals -rw-r--r-- 1 nico users 15 2005-11-17 16:44 source [10:47] zaphodbeeblebrox:ccollect-0.2% cat conf/sources/testsource2/exclude openvpn-2.0.1.tar.gz nicht_reinnehmen etwas mit leerzeichenli [10:47] zaphodbeeblebrox:ccollect-0.2% ls -l conf/sources/testsource2/intervals insgesamt 4 -rw-r--r-- 1 nico users 2 2005-12-07 17:38 daily [10:48] zaphodbeeblebrox:ccollect-0.2% cat conf/sources/testsource2/intervals/daily 5 [10:48] zaphodbeeblebrox:ccollect-0.2% cat conf/sources/testsource2/source /home/nico/vpn
If you add $CCOLLECT_CONF/defaults/option_name, the value will be used in abscence of the option in a source. If you want to prevent the default value to be used in a source, you can create the file $CCOLLECT_CONF/sources/$name/no_option_name (i.e. prefix it with no_.
Example:
[9:04] ikn2:ccollect% touch conf/defaults/verbose [9:04] ikn2:ccollect% touch conf/sources/local/no_verbose
This enables the verbose option for all sources, but disables it for the source local.
If an option is specified in the defaults folder and in the source, the source specific version overrides the default one:
Example:
[9:05] ikn2:ccollect% echo "backup-host" > conf/defaults/remote_host [9:05] ikn2:ccollect% echo "different-host" > conf/sources/local/remote_host
You can use all source options as defaults, with the exception of
source
destination
pre_exec
post_exec
source describes a rsync compatible source (one line only).
For instance backup_user@foreign_host:/home/server/video. To use the rsync protocol without the ssh-tunnel, use rsync::USER@HOST/SRC. For more information have a look at the manpage of rsync(1).
destination must be a text file containing the destination directory. destination USED to be a link to the destination directory in earlier versions, so do not be confused if you see such examples.
Example:
[11:36] zaphodbeeblebrox:ccollect-0.2% cat conf/sources/testsource2/destination /home/nico/backupdir
remote_host must be a text file containing the destination host. If this file is existing, you are backing up your data TO this host and not to you local host.
Warning: You need to have ssh access to the remote host. rsync and ccollect will connect to that host via ssh. ccollect needs the shell access, because it needs to find out how many backups exist on the remote host and to be able to delete them.
Example:
[10:17] denkbrett:ccollect-0.7.0% cat conf/sources/remote1/remote_host home.schottelius.org
It may contain all the ssh-specific values like myuser@yourhost.ch.
verbose tells ccollect that the log should contain verbose messages.
If this file exists in the source specification -v will be passed to rsync.
Example:
[11:35] zaphodbeeblebrox:ccollect-0.2% touch conf/sources/testsource1/verbose
very_verbose tells ccollect that it should log very verbosely.
If this file exists in the source specification -v will be passed to rsync, rm and mkdir.
Example:
[23:67] nohost:~% touch conf/sources/testsource1/very_verbose
If you create the file summary in the source definition, ccollect will present you a nice summary at the end.
backup:~# touch /etc/ccollect/sources/root/summary backup:~# ccollect.sh werktags root ==> ccollect.sh: Beginning backup using interval werktags <== [root] Beginning to backup this source ... [root] Currently 3 backup(s) exist, total keeping 50 backup(s). [root] Beginning to backup, this may take some time... [root] Hard linking... [root] Transferring files... [root] [root] Number of files: 84183 [root] Number of files transferred: 32 [root] Total file size: 26234080536 bytes [root] Total transferred file size: 9988252 bytes [root] Literal data: 9988252 bytes [root] Matched data: 0 bytes [root] File list size: 3016771 [root] File list generation time: 1.786 seconds [root] File list transfer time: 0.000 seconds [root] Total bytes sent: 13009119 [root] Total bytes received: 2152 [root] [root] sent 13009119 bytes received 2152 bytes 2891393.56 bytes/sec [root] total size is 26234080536 speedup is 2016.26 [root] Successfully finished backup. ==> Finished ccollect.sh <==
You could also combine it with verbose or very_verbose, but these already print some statistics (though not all / the same as presented by summary).
exclude specifies a list of paths to exclude. The entries are seperated by a newline (\n).
Example:
[11:35] zaphodbeeblebrox:ccollect-0.2% cat conf/sources/testsource2/exclude openvpn-2.0.1.tar.gz nicht_reinnehmen etwas mit leerzeichenli something with spaces is not a problem
When you create the subdirectory intervals/ in your source configuration directory, you can specify individiual intervals for this specific source. Each file in this directory describes an interval.
Example:
[11:37] zaphodbeeblebrox:ccollect-0.2% ls -l conf/sources/testsource2/intervals/ insgesamt 8 -rw-r--r-- 1 nico users 2 2005-12-07 17:38 daily -rw-r--r-- 1 nico users 3 2005-12-14 11:33 yearly [11:37] zaphodbeeblebrox:ccollect-0.2% cat conf/sources/testsource2/intervals/* 5 20
When you create the file rsync_options in your source configuration, all the parameters in this file will be passed to rsync. This way you can pass additional options to rsync. For instance you can tell rsync to show progress ("--progress"), or which -password-file ("--password-file") to use for automatic backup over the rsync-protocol.
Example:
[23:42] hydrogenium:ccollect-0.2% cat conf/sources/test_rsync/rsync_options --password-file=/home/user/backup/protected_password_file
When you create pre_exec and / or post_exec in your source configuration, ccollect will execute this command before and respectively after doing the backup for this specific source. If you want to have pre-/post-exec before and after all backups, see above for general configuration.
If pre_exec exits with a non-zero return code, the backup process of this source will be aborted (i.e. backup skipped).
The post_exec script can access the following exported variables from ccollect:
name: name of the source that is being backed up
destination_name: contains the base directory name (daily.20091031-1013.24496)
destination_dir: full path (/tmp/ccollect/daily.20091031-1013.24496)
destination_full: like destination_dir, but prepended with the remote_host, if set (host:/tmp/ccollect/daily.20091031-1013.24496 or /tmp/ccollect/daily.20091031-1013.24496)
Example:
[13:09] hydrogenium:ccollect-0.3% cat conf/sources/with_exec/pre_exec #!/bin/sh # Show whats free before df -h [13:09] hydrogenium:ccollect-0.3% cat conf/sources/with_exec/post_exec #!/bin/sh # Show whats free after df -h
If you create the file delete_incomplete in a source specification directory, ccollect will look for incomplete backups (when the whole ccollect process was interrupted) and remove them. Without this file ccollect will only warn the user.
If you have the file rsync_failure_codes in your source configuration directory, it should contain a newline-separated list of numbers representing rsync exit codes. If rsync exits with any code in this list, a marker will be left in the destination directory indicating failure of this backup. If you have enabled delete_incomplete, then this backup will be deleted during the next ccollect run on the same interval.
By default, ccollect.sh chooses the most recent backup directory for cloning or the oldest for deletion based on the directory’s last change time (ctime). With this option, the sorting is done based on modification time (mtime). With this version of ccollect, the ctime and mtime of your backups will normally be the same and this option has no effect. However, if you, for example, move your backups to another hard disk using cp -a or rsync -a, you should use this option because the ctimes are not preserved during such operations.
If you have any backups in your repository made with ccollect version 0.7.1 or earlier, do not use this option.
By default, ccollect.sh emits a series of error messages if a source is not connectable. With this option enabled, ccollect still reports that the source is not connectable but the associated error messages generated by rsync or ssh are suppressed. You may want to use this option for sources, like notebook PCs, that are often disconnected.
Since ccollect-0.6.1 you can use the ccollect-logwrapper.sh(1) for logging. You call it the same way you call ccollect.sh and it will create a logfile containing the output of ccollect.sh. For more information look at the manpage ccollect-logwrapper. The following is an example running ccollect-logwrapper.sh:
u0219 ~ # ~chdscni9/ccollect-logwrapper.sh daily u0160.nshq.ch.netstream.com ccollect-logwrapper.sh (11722): Starting with arguments: daily u0160.nshq.ch.netstream.com ccollect-logwrapper.sh (11722): Finished.
Mostly easy is to use your ~/.ssh/config file:
host mx2.schottelius.org Port 2342
If you only use that port for backup only and normally want to use another port, you can add HostName and "HostKeyAlias" (if you also have different keys on the different ports):
Host hhydrogenium Hostname bruehe.schottelius.org Port 666 HostKeyAlias hydrogenium Host bruehe Hostname bruehe.schottelius.org Port 22 HostKeyAlias bruehe.schottelius.org
The pre-/post_exec scripts can access some internal variables from ccollect:
INTERVAL: The interval specified on the command line
no_sources: number of sources
source_$NUM: the name of the source
name: the name of the currently being backuped source (not available for generic pre_exec script)
Only available for post_exec:
remote_host: name of host we backup to (empty if unused)
When you have a computer with little computing power, it may be useful to use rsync without ssh, directly using the rsync protocol (specify user@host::share in source). You may wish to use rsync_options to specify a password file to use for automatic backup.
Example:
backup:~# cat /etc/ccollect/sources/sample.backup.host.org/source backup@webserver::backup-share backup:~# cat /etc/ccollect/sources/sample.backup.host.org/rsync_options --password-file=/etc/ccollect/sources/sample.backup.host.org/rsync_password backup:~# cat /etc/ccollect/sources/sample.backup.host.org/rsync_password this_is_the_rsync_password
This hint was reported by Daniel Aubry.
When you exclude "/proc" or "/mnt" from your backup, you may run into trouble when you restore your backup. When you use "/proc/*" or "/mnt/\*" instead, ccollect will backup empty directories.
|
Note
|
When those directories contain hidden files (those beginning with a dot (.)), they will still be transferred! |
This hint was reported by Marcus Wagner.
If you used rsync directly before you use ccollect, you can use this old backup as initial backup for ccollect: You simply move it into a directory below the destination directory and name it "interval.0".
Example:
backup:/home/backup/web1# ls bin dev etc initrd lost+found mnt root srv usr vmlinuz boot doc home lib media opt sbin tmp var vmlinuz.old backup:/home/backup/web1# mkdir daily.0 # ignore error about copying to itself backup:/home/backup/web1# mv * daily.0 2>/dev/null backup:/home/backup/web1# ls daily.0
Now you can use /home/backup/web1 as the destination for the backup.
|
Note
|
It does not matter anymore how you name your directory, as ccollect uses the -c option from ls to find out which directory to clone from. |
|
Note
|
Older versions (pre 0.6, iirc) had a problem, if you named the first backup something like "daily.initial". It was needed to use the "0" (or some number that is lower than the current year) as extension. ccollect used sort to find the latest backup. ccollect itself uses interval.YEARMONTHDAY-HOURMINUTE.PID. This notation was always before "daily.initial", as numbers are earlier in the list which is produced by sort. So, if you had a directory named "daily.initial", ccollect always diffed against this backup and transfered and deleted files which where deleted in previous backups. This means you simply wasted resources, but your backup had beer complete anyway. |
Your pre_/post_exec script does not need to be a script, you can also use a link to
an existing program
an already written script
The only requirement is that it is executable.
When you are backing up multiple hosts via cron each night, it may be a problem that host "big_server" may only have 4 daily backups, because otherwise its backup device will be full. But for all other hosts you want to keep 20 daily backups. In this case you would create /etc/ccollect/default/intervals/daily containing "20" and /etc/ccollect/sources/big_server/intervals/daily containing "4".
Source specific intervals always overwrite the default values. If you have to specify it individually for every host, because of different requirements, you can even omit creating /etc/ccollect/default/intervals/daily.
If you want to see what changed between two backups, you can use rsync directly:
[12:00] u0255:ddba034.netstream.ch# rsync -n -a --delete --stats --progress daily.20080324-0313.17841/ daily.20080325-0313.31148/
This results in a listing of changes. Because we pass -n to rsync no transfer is made (i.e. report only mode).
This hint was reported by Daniel Aubry.
If you want to test whether the host you try to backup is reachable, you can use the following script as source specific pre-exec:
#!/bin/sh # ping -c1 -q `cat "/etc/ccollect/sources/$name/source" | cut -d"@" -f2 | cut -d":" -f1`
This prevents the deletion of old backups, if the host is not reachable.
This hint was reported by Daniel Aubry.
If you want to see whether there have been any errors while doing the backup, you can run ccollect together with ccollect_analyse_logs.sh:
$ ccollect | ccollect_analyse_logs.sh e
Let us assume that one backup failed (connection broke or the source hard disk had some failures). Therefore we’ve got one incomplete backup in our history.
ccollect will transfer the missing files the next time you use it. This leads to
more transferred files
much greater disk space usage, as no hardlinks can be used
If the whole ccollect process was interrupted, ccollect (since 0.6) can detect that and remove the incomplete backups, so you can clone from a complete backup instead
No. ccollect passes your source definition directly to rsync. It does not try to analyze it. So it actually does not know if a source comes from local harddisk or from a remote server. And it does not want to. When you backup from the local harddisk (which is perhaps not even a good idea when thinking of security), add the destination to source/exclude. (Daniel Aubry reported this problem)
The most common error is that you have not given your script the correct permissions. Try chmod 0755 /etc/ccollect/sources/'yoursource'/*_exec`.
When a part of your path you specified in the source is a (symbolic, hard links are not possible for directories) link, the backup must fail.
First of all, let us have a look at how it looks like:
==> ccollect 0.4: Beginning backup using interval taeglich <== [testsource] Sa Apr 29 00:01:55 CEST 2006 Beginning to backup [testsource] Currently 0 backup(s) exist(s), total keeping 10 backup(s). [testsource] Beginning to backup, this may take some time... [testsource] Creating /etc/ccollect/sources/testsource/destination/taeglich.2006-04-29-0001.3874 ... [testsource] Sa Apr 29 00:01:55 CEST 2006 Transferring files... [testsource] rsync: recv_generator: mkdir "/etc/ccollect/sources/testsource/destination/taeglich.2006-04-29-0001.3874/home/user/nico/projekte/ccollect" failed: No such file or directory (2) [testsource] rsync: stat "/etc/ccollect/sources/testsource/destination/taeglich.2006-04-29-0001.3874/home/user/nico/projekte/ccollect" failed: No such file or directory (2) [...]
So what is the problem? It is very obvious when you look deeper into it:
% cat /etc/ccollect/sources/testsource/source /home/user/nico/projekte/ccollect/ccollect-0.4 % ls -l /home/user/nico/projekte lrwxrwxrwx 1 nico nico 29 2005-12-02 23:28 /home/user/nico/projekte -> oeffentlich/computer/projekte % ls -l /etc/ccollect/sources/testsource/destination/taeglich.2006-04-29-0001.3874/home/user/nico lrwxrwxrwx 1 nico nico 29 2006-04-29 00:01 projekte -> oeffentlich/computer/projekte
rsync creates the directory structure before it creates the symbolic link. This link now links to something not reachable (dead link). It is impossible to create subdirectories under the broken link.
In conclusion you cannot use paths with a linked part.
However, you can backup directories containing symbolic links (in this case you could backup /home/user/nico, which contains /home/user/nico/projekte and oeffentlich/computer/projekte).
As ccollect first deletes the old backups, it may take some time until rsync requests the password for the ssh session from you.
The easiest way not to miss that point is running ccollect in screen, which has the ability to monitor the output for activity. So as soon as your screen beeps, after ccollect began to remove the last directory, you can enter your password (have a look at screen(1), especially "C-a M" and "C-a _", for more information).
srwali01:~# mkdir /etc/ccollect srwali01:~# mkdir -p /etc/ccollect/defaults/intervals/ srwali01:~# echo 28 > /etc/ccollect/defaults/intervals/taeglich srwali01:~# echo 52 > /etc/ccollect/defaults/intervals/woechentlich srwali01:~# cd /etc/ccollect/ srwali01:/etc/ccollect# mkdir sources srwali01:/etc/ccollect# cd sources/ srwali01:/etc/ccollect/sources# ls srwali01:/etc/ccollect/sources# mkdir local-root srwali01:/etc/ccollect/sources# cd local-root/ srwali01:/etc/ccollect/sources/local-root# echo / > source srwali01:/etc/ccollect/sources/local-root# cat > exclude << EOF > /proc > /sys > /mnt > EOF srwali01:/etc/ccollect/sources/local-root# echo /mnt/hdbackup/local-root > destination srwali01:/etc/ccollect/sources/local-root# mkdir /mnt/hdbackup/local-root srwali01:/etc/ccollect/sources/local-root# ccollect.sh taeglich local-root /o> ccollect.sh: Beginning backup using interval taeglich /=> Beginning to backup "local-root" ... |-> 0 backup(s) already exist, keeping 28 backup(s).
After that, I added some more sources:
srwali01:~# cd /etc/ccollect/sources srwali01:/etc/ccollect/sources# mkdir windos-wl6 srwali01:/etc/ccollect/sources# cd windos-wl6/ srwali01:/etc/ccollect/sources/windos-wl6# echo /mnt/win/SYS/WL6 > source srwali01:/etc/ccollect/sources/windos-wl6# echo /mnt/hdbackup/wl6 > destination srwali01:/etc/ccollect/sources/windos-wl6# mkdir /mnt/hdbackup/wl6 srwali01:/etc/ccollect/sources/windos-wl6# cd .. srwali01:/etc/ccollect/sources# mkdir windos-daten srwali01:/etc/ccollect/sources/windos-daten# echo /mnt/win/Daten > source srwali01:/etc/ccollect/sources/windos-daten# echo /mnt/hdbackup/windos-daten > destination srwali01:/etc/ccollect/sources/windos-daten# mkdir /mnt/hdbackup/windos-daten # Now add some remote source srwali01:/etc/ccollect/sources/windos-daten# cd .. srwali01:/etc/ccollect/sources# mkdir srwali03 srwali01:/etc/ccollect/sources# cd srwali03/ srwali01:/etc/ccollect/sources/srwali03# cat > exclude << EOF > /proc > /sys > /mnt > /home > EOF srwali01:/etc/ccollect/sources/srwali03# echo 'root@10.103.2.3:/' > source srwali01:/etc/ccollect/sources/srwali03# echo /mnt/hdbackup/srwali03 > destination srwali01:/etc/ccollect/sources/srwali03# mkdir /mnt/hdbackup/srwali03
# du (coreutils) 5.2.1 [10:53] srsyg01:sources% du -sh ~/backupdir 4.6M /home/nico/backupdir [10:53] srsyg01:sources% du -sh ~/backupdir/* 4.1M /home/nico/backupdir/daily.2005-12-08-10:52.28456 4.1M /home/nico/backupdir/daily.2005-12-08-10:53.28484 4.1M /home/nico/backupdir/daily.2005-12-08-10:53.28507 4.1M /home/nico/backupdir/daily.2005-12-08-10:53.28531 4.1M /home/nico/backupdir/daily.2005-12-08-10:53.28554 4.1M /home/nico/backupdir/daily.2005-12-08-10:53.28577 srwali01:/etc/ccollect/sources# du -sh /mnt/hdbackup/wl6/ 186M /mnt/hdbackup/wl6/ srwali01:/etc/ccollect/sources# du -sh /mnt/hdbackup/wl6/* 147M /mnt/hdbackup/wl6/taeglich.2005-12-08-14:42.312 147M /mnt/hdbackup/wl6/taeglich.2005-12-08-14:45.588
The backup of our main fileserver:
backup:~# df -h /home/backup/srsyg01/
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/backup--01-srsyg01
591G 451G 111G 81% /home/backup/srsyg01
backup:~# du -sh /home/backup/srsyg01/*
432G /home/backup/srsyg01/daily.2006-01-24-01:00.15990
432G /home/backup/srsyg01/daily.2006-01-26-01:00.30152
434G /home/backup/srsyg01/daily.2006-01-27-01:00.4596
435G /home/backup/srsyg01/daily.2006-01-28-01:00.11998
437G /home/backup/srsyg01/daily.2006-01-29-01:00.19115
437G /home/backup/srsyg01/daily.2006-01-30-01:00.26405
438G /home/backup/srsyg01/daily.2006-01-31-01:00.1148
439G /home/backup/srsyg01/daily.2006-02-01-01:00.8321
439G /home/backup/srsyg01/daily.2006-02-02-01:00.15383
439G /home/backup/srsyg01/daily.2006-02-03-01:00.22567
16K /home/backup/srsyg01/lost+found
backup:~# du --version | head -n1
du (coreutils) 5.2.1
Newer versions of du also detect the hardlinks, so we can even compare the sizes directly with du:
[8:16] eiche:~# du --version | head -n 1 du (GNU coreutils) 5.93 [8:17] eiche:schwarzesloch# du -slh hydrogenium/* 19G hydrogenium/durcheinander.0 18G hydrogenium/durcheinander.2006-01-17-00:27.13820 19G hydrogenium/durcheinander.2006-01-25-23:18.31328 19G hydrogenium/durcheinander.2006-01-26-00:11.3332 [8:22] eiche:schwarzesloch# du -sh hydrogenium/* 19G hydrogenium/durcheinander.0 12G hydrogenium/durcheinander.2006-01-17-00:27.13820 1.5G hydrogenium/durcheinander.2006-01-25-23:18.31328 200M hydrogenium/durcheinander.2006-01-26-00:11.3332
In the second report (without -l) the sizes include the space the inodes of the hardlinks allocate.
All the data of my important hosts is backuped to eiche into /mnt/schwarzesloch/backup:
[9:24] eiche:backup# ls * creme: woechentlich.2006-01-26-22:22.4153 woechentlich.2006-02-12-11:48.2461 woechentlich.2006-01-26-22:23.4180 woechentlich.2006-02-18-23:00.7898 woechentlich.2006-02-05-02:43.14281 woechentlich.2006-02-25-23:00.13480 woechentlich.2006-02-06-00:24.15509 woechentlich.2006-03-04-23:00.25439 hydrogenium: durcheinander.2006-01-27-11:16.6391 durcheinander.2006-02-13-01:07.2895 durcheinander.2006-01-30-19:29.9505 durcheinander.2006-02-17-08:20.6707 durcheinander.2006-01-30-22:27.9623 durcheinander.2006-02-24-16:24.12461 durcheinander.2006-02-03-09:52.12885 durcheinander.2006-03-03-19:17.18075 durcheinander.2006-02-05-23:00.15068 durcheinander.2006-03-17-22:41.5007 scice: woechentlich.2006-02-04-10:32.13766 woechentlich.2006-02-16-23:00.6185 woechentlich.2006-02-05-23:02.15093 woechentlich.2006-02-23-23:00.11783 woechentlich.2006-02-06-08:22.15994 woechentlich.2006-03-02-23:00.17346 woechentlich.2006-02-06-19:40.16321 woechentlich.2006-03-09-23:00.29317 woechentlich.2006-02-12-11:51.2514 woechentlich.2006-03-16-23:00.4218
And this incremental backup and the archive are copied to an external usb harddisk (attention: you should really use -H to backup the backup):
[9:23] eiche:backup# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
rootfs 14G 8.2G 4.9G 63% /
/dev/root 14G 8.2G 4.9G 63% /
/dev/root 14G 8.2G 4.9G 63% /dev/.static/dev
tmpfs 10M 444K 9.6M 5% /dev
/dev/hdh 29G 3.7M 29G 1% /mnt/datenklo
tmpfs 110M 4.0K 110M 1% /dev/shm
/dev/mapper/nirvana 112G 90G 23G 81% /mnt/datennirvana
/dev/mapper/schwarzes-loch
230G 144G 86G 63% /mnt/schwarzesloch
/dev/mapper/archiv 38G 20G 19G 52% /mnt/archiv
/dev/mapper/usb-backup
280G 36M 280G 1% /mnt/usb/backup
[9:24] eiche:backup# cat ~/bin/sync-to-usb
DDIR=/mnt/usb/backup
rsync -av -H --delete /mnt/schwarzesloch/ "$DDIR/schwarzesloch/"
rsync -av -H --delete /mnt/archiv/ "$DDIR/archiv/"
Truncated output from ps axuwwwf:
S+ 11:40 0:00 | | | \_ /bin/sh /usr/local/bin/ccollect.sh daily -p ddba034 ddba045 ddba046 ddba047 ddba049 ddna010 ddna011 S+ 11:40 0:00 | | | \_ /bin/sh /usr/local/bin/ccollect.sh daily ddba034 S+ 11:40 0:00 | | | | \_ /bin/sh /usr/local/bin/ccollect.sh daily ddba034 R+ 11:40 23:40 | | | | | \_ rsync -a --delete --numeric-ids --relative --delete-excluded --link-dest=/home/server/backup/ddba034 S+ 11:40 0:00 | | | | | \_ ssh -l root ddba034.netstream.ch rsync --server --sender -vlogDtprR --numeric-ids . / S+ 11:41 0:11 | | | | | \_ rsync -a --delete --numeric-ids --relative --delete-excluded --link-dest=/home/server/backup/ddb S+ 11:40 0:00 | | | | \_ /bin/sh /usr/local/bin/ccollect.sh daily ddba034 S+ 11:40 0:00 | | | | \_ sed s:^:\[ddba034\] : S+ 11:40 0:00 | | | \_ /bin/sh /usr/local/bin/ccollect.sh daily ddba045 S+ 11:40 0:00 | | | | \_ /bin/sh /usr/local/bin/ccollect.sh daily ddba045 R+ 11:40 0:02 | | | | | \_ rm -rf /etc/ccollect/sources/ddba045/destination/daily.2006-10-19-1807.6934 S+ 11:40 0:00 | | | | \_ /bin/sh /usr/local/bin/ccollect.sh daily ddba045 S+ 11:40 0:00 | | | | \_ sed s:^:\[ddba045\] : S+ 11:40 0:00 | | | \_ /bin/sh /usr/local/bin/ccollect.sh daily ddba046 S+ 11:40 0:00 | | | | \_ /bin/sh /usr/local/bin/ccollect.sh daily ddba046 R+ 11:40 0:02 | | | | | \_ rm -rf /etc/ccollect/sources/ddba046/destination/daily.2006-10-19-1810.7072 S+ 11:40 0:00 | | | | \_ /bin/sh /usr/local/bin/ccollect.sh daily ddba046 S+ 11:40 0:00 | | | | \_ sed s:^:\[ddba046\] : S+ 11:40 0:00 | | | \_ /bin/sh /usr/local/bin/ccollect.sh daily ddba047 S+ 11:40 0:00 | | | | \_ /bin/sh /usr/local/bin/ccollect.sh daily ddba047 R+ 11:40 0:03 | | | | | \_ rm -rf /etc/ccollect/sources/ddba047/destination/daily.2006-10-19-1816.7268 S+ 11:40 0:00 | | | | \_ /bin/sh /usr/local/bin/ccollect.sh daily ddba047 S+ 11:40 0:00 | | | | \_ sed s:^:\[ddba047\] : S+ 11:40 0:00 | | | \_ /bin/sh /usr/local/bin/ccollect.sh daily ddba049 S+ 11:40 0:00 | | | | \_ /bin/sh /usr/local/bin/ccollect.sh daily ddba049 D+ 11:40 0:03 | | | | | \_ rm -rf /etc/ccollect/sources/ddba049/destination/daily.2006-10-19-1821.7504 S+ 11:40 0:00 | | | | \_ /bin/sh /usr/local/bin/ccollect.sh daily ddba049 S+ 11:40 0:00 | | | | \_ sed s:^:\[ddba049\] : S+ 11:40 0:00 | | | \_ /bin/sh /usr/local/bin/ccollect.sh daily ddna010 S+ 11:40 0:00 | | | | \_ /bin/sh /usr/local/bin/ccollect.sh daily ddna010 R+ 11:40 0:03 | | | | | \_ rm -rf /etc/ccollect/sources/ddna010/destination/daily.2006-10-19-1805.6849 S+ 11:40 0:00 | | | | \_ /bin/sh /usr/local/bin/ccollect.sh daily ddna010 S+ 11:40 0:00 | | | | \_ sed s:^:\[ddna010\] : S+ 11:40 0:00 | | | \_ /bin/sh /usr/local/bin/ccollect.sh daily ddna011 S+ 11:40 0:00 | | | \_ /bin/sh /usr/local/bin/ccollect.sh daily ddna011 R+ 12:08 0:00 | | | | \_ rm -rf /etc/ccollect/sources/ddna011/destination/daily.2006-10-20-1502.7824 S+ 11:40 0:00 | | | \_ /bin/sh /usr/local/bin/ccollect.sh daily ddna011 S+ 11:40 0:00 | | | \_ sed s:^:\[ddna011\] :
As you can see, six processes are deleting old backups, while one backup (ddba034) is already copying data.