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Incremental/snapshot backups using rsync - is it really this simple?
by Chris Green 20 Oct '14

20 Oct '14

I've been using rsnapshot to do backups for a year or two now but my backup NAS is just about full so I need to move to something with a bigger disk. Rsnapshot uses rsync's --link-dest to create the hard-linked snapshots along with a lot of arcane perl (as far as I'm concerned Perl is always arcane!) and a big, complex configuration file. So I'm considering a roll-your-own approach, it seems just too simple to be true. Does following pseudo-code look right:- Run every day in the small hours IF (day_of_month = 1) IF (month = 1) # i.e. January 1st rename month12 to this_year ELSE remove month12 FI rename month11 to month 12 .... month1 to month2 rename day31 to month1 ELSE remove day31 FI move day30 to day31 .... day1 to day2 rsync with the --link-dest=DIR pointing to day2 I can create all the directories empty to start with so they're all there to be moved even though with nothing in them. This will (hopefully!) create daily backups for 31 days, monthly backups for 12 months and yearly backups for ever (!?). -- Chris Green

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Re: [ALUG] Dropbox alternatives
by Mark Rogers 20 Oct '14

20 Oct '14

On 20 October 2014 14:27, mick <mbm(a)rlogin.net> wrote: > If you do not pay for a service, you are not the customer, you are > the product. Google, Facebook and others base their entire (hugely > profitable) businesses on that fact. > > I cannot understand how anyone would willingly synchronise any > personal data of any kind with a "free" cloud service. SyncThing/Pulse is a P2P sync service that runs entirely on your own hardware. They are "providing" software not a service, although I daresay they will provide a hosted option in future for those who want it. It's entirely open source. BTsync is similar without the benefits of being open source. It's plus, however, is that it's easier to set up (albeit with some loss of security). SyncThing would get my vote of the two, other than that at the moment I've not got it to work properly... (see other response to Steve) -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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How to prevent a system from changing its ssh key every time it boots?
by Chris Green 20 Oct '14

20 Oct '14

My dlink NAS backup is working nicely now except for one fly in the ointment, it regenerates its ssh key every time it's rebooted. We had a (planned) power cut last week and thus the key was changed and my backups failed until I fixed things up again. So what's the best way around this problem? At the moment I can't see where ssh-keygen gets run though I'm still searching. Is there any specific way around this issue of a remote system's ssh key changing frequently (other than relaxing checks so it's just a warning rather than a failure)? -- Chris Green

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PGP signing
by Steve Engledow 17 Oct '14

17 Oct '14

Hi folks, Some time ago, you may remember I wrote a meeting report about a successful keysigning event we had at an ALUG pub meet. Shortly after that, I went and forgot the passphrase for my private key. Because I'm a genius. I posted to this list that I had a new key and would people please sign it but I couldn't prove it via PGP. Now I can because some muscle memory suddenly remembered the passphrase for me! Here's a revocation certificate for the old key: -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: GnuPG v2 Comment: A revocation certificate should follow iGAEIBEIACAFAlRBi/YZHQFUaGUgbmV3IGtleSBpcyBGM0MxODZEMQAKCRAIRtlz 1F7jmuj2AJ9KOrw/fGdcP0pc1KwVRV0YhuD+DgCgxL9N3PivCbq4b/hBV0JUlR9e Uwk= =GR6J -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- And I've signed that revocation certificate with my current key: -----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE----- Version: GnuPG v2 owGbwMvMwMG4/7sM1+eDbRcZTx+IS2IIcezx0AUBJ1d3Tz+FAPcAhYBQJx9PZwVv 10gFJx9/Z2+wNFdYalFxZn6elYJ7XmmAu0KZEZdzfm5ual6JlYKjQlFqWX5yYglQ XiE5tagkMy0TyEtVKM7IL81JUUjLz8nJL+fiynR3dPV0cvV0dHZ0c8wJcsrUj4zy CHQLTXQPTU/KDTP2dC/JSQ12KkiudHL3NfCt8HeJcvUNdPR2DnL0DCrJqeIydDPP yi3NMnL0svT2LyrXT3NPSQ4wKEg29C4PCwoziMwoddF2SXdOr/Cx9DMOyCxzTio0 SdLPcAoz8ArNCbJM5Qotz7blsnUPMvPiAvvK1c8Fj5c7mWRYGBg5GNhYmUDBxMDF KQALvJ36/P/MG5MVM3i2uzlUvtHmaeZ/+epTxvMP951Zqs3nfpVSDTeUOiAubcus olt9bmLw9+zCf/N0Z57YI3hb+7rbmutO3x69PJNVK/ui+lf6CQujFVMO3p/MHyXF cezXDutrJe+XzLrnvG5BJ++EgvSiNRZNxd84Mo7q+C/ZIxX8/sM70VrlM9rzLxcZ 5u4WkvGeZ/87ylj6TYj5nfZ1a5Uk92j/DNuyf/Pa0i977W6/T9956t37qUr8LrfP pho7CCxaL1svWTz354+5eucupYVX2boka16TWhT+vWGbqpPuB5+mCs+jU8LnWaVf aL825fcu4UVmZn5sjXGRe+12LDHZ9aIzSpbPXmqWvdHl0M7yzQKM5+v/+YrPsIhW 2CLBcSxrxuRDc/SX2Krv+KaR2vX87GneiW/NPmsdKXnsyLd1pdnTvq9sP80rX6UK yec8O6edVsDw1IBTpmU71zmdls7AAxw7l4bz1sSv+r5jU0vrI/+XqXJ72zUeFP9+ 9ev4s0kTzXMEti4sKt6jH2IyY+o2Ld2X1T/t+eWXyMztvG4pY5shxbr2PXd8yPSu 48UvZ95UkYm6dTblS0XS0ndBKortbatKWXT2a+o4L533853Ox8xNexIn2YcvMWjj nL3W9MTmvn8OBpql7V1Jb0XdbG/cT/7eNbk6zLpm1YbQWVMmx2nYHpQXlzvaNF/L ptlcTb7zwobW3JB/Ty2OifFtSQQA =wAkV -----END PGP MESSAGE----- That ought to do it. Anyone who has signed my old key, please feel free to sign the current one now you have proof it's me :) Cheers, Steve

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Best way to backup a server prior to decommissioning
by Mark Rogers 17 Oct '14

17 Oct '14

What's the best way to backup a (virtual) server prior to shutting it down and disposing of it? Assume only a single filesystem, which in turn means that the backup will have to go onto that filesystem (obviously on completion the file would be copied off before the server was killed!); also assume no access to it except via SSH so no image backups etc. Objectives: To have access to everything in case it was needed, and ideally to be able to rebuild the server as it was should it be needed again in future. Mark -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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Thunderbird and LDAP
by Jenny Hopkins 15 Oct '14

15 Oct '14

Hullo, I've set up an LDAP server for a client to share his address book between thunderbird (running on Ubuntu 14.04) and webmail. A new entry can be added manually from thunderbird, but there is no option to auto-add new addresses to any other address book than the thunderbird one. I've had a google goggle, and it seems I can't do anything about this - can anyone tell me I'm wrong and it is possible? If not, are there any clients that will allow this option? This is a serious drawback. Thanks, Jenny

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My incremental/snapshot backup system - now working
by Chris Green 09 Oct '14

09 Oct '14

Well I have implemented my simple incremental/snapshot backup strategy and it works pretty well. The whole thing comprises an rsync backup run daily by anacron in /etc/cron.daily, an rsync server/daemon on the backup NAS and a script on the NAS that rotates the backups. The whole lot is probably 100 lines of code in total - and that's *with* lots of comments! :-) I have appended the three main component files for those who want to see. The 'clever' bit is that all of the backups on the NAS except the two latest ones are completely inaccessible from the outside, you can only get at them if you have a login on the NAS. That's the bit that is rare in most backup systems I've looked at. You could maybe get a similar result with a 'pull' system run from the backup server but then that would be very slow on the underpowered NAS processor, on my system most of the work is done at the sending end (my desktop). ... oh and the *BIG* advantage is that all the backups are complete mirrors of the backed up files, no compression, no tar archives, you can navigate around the backups exactly as you can navigate around your current home directory. It means it's *very* eay to check that backups are OK and no special tools at all are needed to restore files, just copy the file you want. So, here is the rsync bit that is run by anacron on my desktop every day. The password is *only* for the rsync server on the backup machine, so access to the script only allows someone to run backups, nothing more. #!/bin/sh export RSYNC_PASSWORD='XXXXXX' # # # Daily backups, copy everything important to the backup machine # EXCLUDE1='--exclude tmp/ --exclude 'Mail/??/' --exclude .VirtualBox/ --exclude .gvfs/' EXCLUDE2='--exclude .cache/ --exclude lost+found' # # # Home directories # rsync -a --port=874 $EXCLUDE1 $EXCLUDE2 --link-dest=/old/home /home/ chris@dlink::chris2day/new/home # # # /etc # rsync -a --port=874 --link-dest=/old/etc /etc/ chris@dlink::chris2day/new/etc This is probably the most difficult bit, the rsyncd configuration file on the backup NAS. I could relax the security somewhat and it would be shorter and simpler. The 'post-xfer exec' runs the rotate.sh script after rsync has transferred the data. hosts allow = 192.168.1.4 hosts deny = * use chroot = no uid = chris gid = allaccount secrets file = /mnt/HD/HD_a2/chris/rsyncd/secrets pid file = /mnt/HD/HD_a2/chris/rsyncd/pid timeout = 300 strict modes = false # log file = /mnt/HD/HD_a2/chris/rsyncd/log [ chris2day ] path = /mnt/HD/HD_a2/chris/today read only = false list = yes post-xfer exec = /mnt/HD/HD_a2/chris/bin/rotate.sh auth users = chris ... and finally the rotate script which is the bit I was asking about previously. I had the algorithm pretty much right. It's a bit clumsy in the shell (ash, it's a busybox based NAS) but it's not quite messy enough to want to move to something better like Python. #!/bin/sh # # # Script to 'rotate' snapshots, runs after rsync creates a new # backup in the today/new directory # cd /mnt/HD/HD_a2/chris/bak # # # Get day, month and year # day=`date +%d` month=`date +%m` year=`date +%Y` # # # Check for first of the month # if [ $day = "1" ] then if [ $month = "1" ] then mv month12 $year else rm month12 fi # # # Move all the months up one # m=11 while [ $m != "0" ] do mv month$m month`expr $m + 1` m=`expr $m - 1` done else rmdir day31 fi # # # Move all the days up one # d=30 while [ $d != "0" ] do mv day$d day`expr $d + 1` d=`expr $d - 1` done # # # and copy the new day1 from today # # # Move the older backup from 'today' to 'bak' and change the # name of the newer one # mv ../today/old day1 mv ../today/new ../today/old mkdir ../today/new chown chris:allaccount ../today/new Like I said I really don't quite understand why rsnapshot et al manage to make it so complicated. OK, the above has 31 days and 12 months hard-coded but given that they're hard-linked snaphots that many backups doesn't take much space at all. -- Chris Green

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Unwanted hardware
by Chris Walker 08 Oct '14

08 Oct '14

I realise that it's unlikely but does anybody here have a use for an Asus desktop machine and a load of floppy discs? The desktop machine was originally running Windows XP but now has a copy of Robolinux on it - it's had various distros on it as I was trying them out for ease of install among other things. It only has 512MB of RAM but does come with an NEC LCD monitor, keyboard and mouse. Also kicking about are several boxes of 3.5" floppies totalling around 150. A few are 720k but most are 1.44MB and some are unused although I did buy them in 1994! If nobody wants them, they'll be going on Freecycle/Freegle. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 9th October
by Viperfang 06 Oct '14

06 Oct '14

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Hello Norwich Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 9th October at The Coach and Horses (82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA). The meeting officially starts at 8pm, although some people may arrive earlier. More information on those people can be found on the list and the IRC channel. If you are unsure if you will recognise us then make yourself and your intent to attend known by either posting on list or visiting us on IRC so we can look out for you rather than hiding in the corner. Optionally you could ask at the bar if they know where the geeky computer weirdos are and they'll point you in the right direction (seriously!). Another possibility is look for heaps of electronics on a table that may possibly look like movie props that would used for detonating explosives. Feel free to bring electronics/laptops/gadgets to the meet, you will by no means be alone. Ben Bewick aka Viperfang NB: This mail is automated, please refer to the usual sources for more information. ALUG Contact Details: Website : http://www.alug.org.uk/ IRC : #alug on irc.alug.org.uk List : http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo Twitter : http://twitter.com/anglianlug Identica: TBA Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2381613902 ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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Default anacron run time of 07:30, what's the logic (if any) for this?
by Chris Green 03 Oct '14

03 Oct '14

I was just wondering why my system is sometimes somewhat busy in the morning and it occurred to me to that anacron might be something to do with it. This is my desktop system which is left turned on all the time. So, after digging around a bit I found that anacron gets run (via /etc/cron.d) at 07:30. So anything that takes a while, like a weekly incremental backup, can often be running when I'm using the computer. What's the reason for choosing 07:30? If the computer is never turned on at 07:30 then does anacron ever get run? Presumably it must get run as part of system start-up otherwise anacron tasks would never be run. So, why not set the default time to 02:30 or something similar so that, if the computer is turned on tasks get run in the small hours? It's easy enough to change of course and I will do so, but the default seems a little odd. -- Chris Green

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