Backup Server

Backup System

Everyone has 20GB available space on fallopius. You are responsible for backup up your own data into the space you have allocated on fallopius. There is an old automated backup system that is still in place, but no longer supported. It was written by Halva and uses rdiff-backup. (Current supported version is 1.1.17. Note that it could not work if your system has a version that is different). Instructions here: Old Backup System (Halva's rdiff system). Good luck.

If you know unison, note that you can also use that for your personal backups. Installed version is 2.27.57. For documentation look here http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/.

All data on the iridia server is backed up by a separate (supported) nightly script that uses dar. This is an incremental backup program that is like a network version of tar. The scripts are run by the crontab of the user servicebackup on iridia using the script /home/servicebackup/iridia_service_backup_system/backup.sh. The shell functions that do the meat of the work are included from the file include.sh in the same directory.

The backed up data is stored in the directory are stored on fallopius in the directory /home/iridiaserver/service_backup_dar. To restore data you will need to familiarise yourself with the dar program, or use the script /home/servicebackup/iridia_service_backup_system/restore.sh on iridia.

The data that is backed up is divided into 'services'. A list of these services can be found in the directory /home/servicebackup/iridia_service_backup_system/services. Each service is a directory that must at a minimum contain scripts called <SERVICE_NAME>_backup.sh and <SERVICE_NAME>_restore.sh. These two scripts should make use of the functions provided by the file /home/servicebackup/iridia_service_backup_system/include.sh which provide wrappers around the dar commands. Optionally, inside each service directory there can be scripts called <SERVICE_NAME>_suspend.sh and <SERVICE_NAME>_resume.sh which will be called before and after the backup, and can be used to stop and start any processes that might interfere with the integrity of the backed up data if they are left running.

A mail gets sent every day to a list of addresses defined in the backup.sh script with the success / failure of the backup in the subject line.

Troubleshooting

Logfiles for each backup are stored in /home/servicebackup/iridia_service_backup_system/log on iridia.ulb.ac.be

A quick way of debugging the system is to run the script /home/servicebackup/iridia_service_backup_system/just_test_backup.sh . This script does a test backup of a small directory and outputs to the logfile test.log.

There is an ugly soft link from /usr/lib/libdar.so.3.0.1 -> /home/iridiaserver/dar/lib/libdar.so.3.0.1 This link has been known to disappear after an upgrade of the system.

svn

The scripting system is maintained and versioned in the svn repository: file:///usr/local/share/svn_repositories/iridia_service_backup_system