Install and setup rsnapshot to make automated backups

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rsnapshot

rsnapshot is a filesystem snapshot utility for making backups of local and remote systems.

Using rsync and hard links, it is possible to keep multiple, full backups instantly available. The disk space required is just a little more than the space of one full backup, plus incrementals.

Depending on your configuration, it is quite possible to set up in just a few minutes. Files can be restored by the users who own them, without the root user getting involved.

Info

I have installed rsnapshot on the FSG with firmware 3.3.9 but it should work on other firmware versions as well. Compiling the latest version from source also produced a working setup.

Backing up to external usb HDD's works perfectly, but one needs to use a ext3 or similar formatted drive that supports hard links. So no FAT32 or NTFS drives.

Installing rsnapshot

Before starting log in as root and install the official ipkg bootstrap first!

The following should also be installed as root.

  • Install Perl "ipkg install perl"
  • Install Rsync "ipkg install rsync"
  • Install rsnapshot "ipkg install rsnapshot"

Optionally one can install the gnu coreutils. This if you want to use gnu cp (busybox cp does not support cp -al yet) If you want to compile the latest rsnapshot from source yourself install the optware-devel package (make, libraries, etc) as well.

  • Install coreutils "ipkg install coreutils"
  • Install make "ipkg install optware-devel"
  • Copy the defaults file to make a working personal configuration file while keeping your original as a backup: "cp /opt/etc/rsnapshot.conf.default /opt/etc/rsnapshot.conf"

Setting up rsnapshot

Edit the /opt/etc/rsnapshot.conf file and use the following settings as a working example: 

snapshot_root		(--> path to your .snapshot directory (backup goal path))
cmd_cp			/opt/bin/cp
cmd_rm			/opt/bin/rm
cmd_rsync		/opt/bin/rsync
cmd_du			/opt/bin/du
cmd_rsnapshot_diff	/opt/bin/rsnapshot-diff
interval		hourly	6
interval		daily	7
interval		weekly	7
interval		monthly	3
verbose			2
loglevel		3
logfile			/var/log/rsnapshot
lockfile		/var/run/rsnapshot.pid
link_dest		1 (--> if you do not want to use gnu cp, but the hardlinking provided by rsync
backup			(--> path of the directory you want to backup (backup source path))

Make sure your /etc/rsnapshot.conf file has all elements separated by tabs.
Make sure you put a trailing slash on the end of all directory references.
  • Test your configuration file with: "/opt/bin/rsnapshot configtest".


rsnapshot can be used by any user, but for system-wide backups you will probably want to run it as root. Since backups usually get neglected if human intervention is required, the preferred way is to run it from cron.

When you are first setting up your backups, you will probably also want to run it from the command line once or twice to get a feel for what it's doing: "rsnapshot hourly" or "rsnapshot daily", etc..

Creating automated backups with cron

Define the intervals hourly, daily, weekly and monthly in /etc/rsnapshot.conf. Underneath the default values are displayed, adjust it to your personal backup needs.

Edit /etc/init.d/croninit and look for: 

echo "$PERIOD" >> /etc/crontab 
fi

Under this add the following new lines: 

echo "0 */4 * * * root /opt/bin/rsnapshot hourly" >> /etc/crontab                                                    
echo "50 23 * * * root /opt/bin/rsnapshot daily" >> /etc/crontab                                                     
echo "40 23 1,8,15,22 * * root /opt/bin/rsnapshot weekly" >> /etc/crontab                                            
echo "30 23 1 * * root /opt/bin/rsnapshot monthly" >> /etc/crontab

This example will do the following:

  • 6 hourly backups a day (once every 4 hours, at 0,4,8,12,16,20)
  • 1 daily backup every day, at 11:50PM
  • 4 weekly backups a month, at 11:40PM, on the 1st, 8th, 15th, and 22nd
  • 1 monthly backup every month, at 11:30PM on the 1st day of the month


Issues

  • The coreutils du creates a segmentation fault when using "rsnapshot du" to check the disk space used by rsnapshot. Work around this by using the busybox du.
  • Coreutils cp did work in my config, but failed when going from daily to monthly. Don't know why and use the rsync provided hardlinking as workaround.

Credits

Credits to the guys from NSLU2, rsync and rsnapshot for their excellent work and info!

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