On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 05:49:47PM -0600, Kent West wrote:
> I have a small server on which I need to backup the /home partition.
>
> I have a Barracuda Terastation Pro backup server sitting right next to
> it, connected via Ethernet.
>
> The problem is that the Terastation Pro only offers three connection
> methods: Windows Fileshare (Samba/smb/cifs), Apple Filesharing (AFS),
> and FTP).
I'd go with FTP
>
> I came into the Linux world about the time that FTP was being deprecated
> in favor of SFTP and its variants, so I have a real skittishness of
> using plain FTP.
If you need security between the two boxes (or on the backup box), then
pipe the tarball through OpenSSL's enc before sending it via FTP.
> I want something:
>
> * simple
> * that will back up 10 - 40 GB of /home partition
tarball, compressed, then encrypted with enc
> * preferably making a full backup every week or so with incrementals
> every day, tossing out old fulls/incrementals as new ones are made
Write a simple script
> * that will work over SMB or FTP securely enough that I can stomach it
> * that preserves directory structure/permissions
openssl encryption
> * that doesn't run into arbitrary limits like 2GB (or works around them)
ftp
> * is automatic, so once set up, I don't have to think about it
script, put it in /etc/cron.daily
> * does not require X or web server installation/tweaking to configure
Just tweak your script.
> * does not require any sort of server piece (other than perhaps an
> /etc/init.d "service" installed as part of a quick and easy "aptitude
> install ..."
> * does not require fancy back-end stuff, like MySQL
>
> I know some of you experts see a solution immediately in using tar or
> rsync, and are thinking, "Well, if Kent had just done his research he'd
> know that if he'd XXX, then YYY...", but that's just it; I'm not a
> full-time researcher of how tar and rsync and Bacula works, and thus I'm
> throwing myself on the mercy of the community for a workable solution.
>
> (I suspect there may be a lot of people like me who knows we need to be
> doing backups but can't find a 2nd-grade-easy system to accomplish the
> task.)
I don't know what a Barracuda Terastation Pro backup server is, but if
it has an ftp server that will allow you to upload a compressed
encrypted tarball, then here's what I'd suggest:
Think of a tool chain. In this case, work backwards since you are
limited to ftp.
First decide if you want to have a local tarball on the box and then
transfer the tarball, or if you want to create and transfer the tarball
in one step. Either way, I would use a tarball. You say you wish to
backup /home so that's easy (assuming no --excludes). Note that if you
don't want a copy of the tarball locally, you'll need an ftp client that
can take stdin as input. If that doesn't work, see if it can take a
named pipe (fifo); you would make a fifo in, e.g. /var/local/backup and
pipe things to that then pipe from that to the ftp client.
Then compress the tarball. Just use gzip. bzip2 makes slightly smaller
archives but uses a lot more CPU time and isn't available on default
installs.
Then if you want to encrypt the tarball, run it through OpenSSL's
encryption, e.g.:
openssl bf -a -e -salt -in {file} -out {file.bf}
If this is going into a pipe-line, then -in and -out would not be needed
as they default to stdin and stdout. You'd also want to provide it with
a password source if you want it automated.
This file.tar.gz.bf (or file.tgz.bf) tarball would then get sent via ftp
to the backup server.
To make this automated, you'll need to write a simple script.
We can work on the details but let me know if my assumptions are valid
(e.g. standard ftp will work).
Doug.
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