mackup

A utility for performing arbitrary backup processes in a standard manner.

Quickstart

Install mackup via apt-get.

# echo 'deb http://pkg.bueller.ca/debian stable main' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pkg.bueller.ca.list
# apt-get update
# apt-get install mackup

Or install mackup manually.

# wget http://www.bueller.ca/downloads/software/mackup/mackup_0.3.1-1_all.deb
# dpkg -i mackup_0.3.1-1_all.deb

Create a directory to store the backup.

# mkdir /var/backups/mackup

Determine which days to perform backups.

# cd /var/backups/mackup
# mkdir mon tues wed thu fri

Configure sources to backup.

# echo '/etc' >> /etc/mackup/sources
# echo '/home' >> /etc/mackup/sources
# echo '/root' >> /etc/mackup/sources

Configure a backup utility. In this case it will be rsync.

# echo <<EOF > /etc/mackup/run
#!/bin/sh
rsync -av --delete $1/$2 $3/
EOF
# chmod +x /etc/mackup/run

Add mackup to cron. Use macklog to capture and timestamp output from mackup and provide log rotation.

# echo <<EOF > /etc/cron.daily/mackup
#!/bin/sh
mackup /var/backups/mackup | macklog /var/log/mackup 10000000 10
EOF
# mkdir /var/log/mackup

That's it. When mackup runs, it will check /var/backups/mackup to see if a backup is scheduled. If it's Monday, mackup will look for a directory called mon, or if it's Tuesday, a directory called tue, etc. If a backup is schedule, then /etc/mackup/run is executed and rsync will be used to copy the directories specified in /etc/mackup/sources into /var/backups/mackup/mon/data. Output is logged and managed by macklog and written to /var/log/mackup/current. When /var/log/mackup/current exceeds 10MB, it will be rotated. macklog will only keep a maximum of 10 log files in /var/log/mackup.

Synopsis

mackup dir
macklog dir [ size [ count ] ]

Description

mackup allows an administrator to backup parts of a system (or systems) in a standard manner using multiple secondary utilities (such as tar or rsync) simply by managing plaintext files. Modifying the contents of these files adjusts the behaviour of the backup, reducing redundancy in scripting the backups by hand while allowing other programs to easily edit and maintain the contents of the files. Abstracting the schedule of the backups from the backup utilities themselves also allows the administrator to change the backup utility, and automatically have the same backup schedule continue.

If the current day is Monday, and the dir/mon directory exists, then all the sources listed in dir/on/sources will be backed up individually into dir/mon/data. If dir/mon/sources doesn't exist, mackup will look for sources in /etc/mackup/sources. If this file doesn't exist, the search stops and an error is produced. For example, if dir/mon/sources contained /etc/, then on Monday the /etc/ folder would be tard and stored in dir/mon/data/etc.tar. dir/mon/data is created automatically if it doesn't exist.

Similariliy, if it's the 3rd of the month and dir/3 exists, then all sources listed in dir/3 will be tard. If both dir/mon and dir/3 exist, both directories will be processed.

Lastly, if the directory dir/daily exists, it will processed every day.

While the sources file lists the location that need to be backed up, the run file specifies the command that actually performs the backup. This file is actually a script that is called by mackup and is passed the following arguments: tdir, t, bdir, b. tdir is the target parent directory for the backup, t is the actual backup target which lives in tdir, bdir is the backup target directory and b is the backup target.

mackup will produce output during it's run. The contents of this output is a mix of notice and error messages as well as the current file path being backed up. This output can be capture and sent to a log file with either the included logging utility macklog or with a third-party utility such as multilog by Dan Bernstein.

macklog reads input on stdin and writes it to the file dir/current. Each line is prepended with a timestamp using the date format %Y%m%d%H%M%S (or [year][month][day][hour][minute][second]). macklog will also perform log rotation if supplied with the size parameter. Once dir/current equals or exceeds size, it is renamed to the timestamp of the last line written to it. If count is specified, then only count number of the latest rotated log files will be kept. Anything older will be deleted.

Options

mackup

• dir The directory that mackup should look in for configuration data.

macklog

• dir The directory that macklog should log to.
• size The size the current file should reach before rotating it. If not specified, no rotation will occur.
• count The number of log files to keep after rotation. Older log files will be deleted first.

Files

• sources The list of locations to backup.
• run The script that is executed to process the backup.