How To Setup and Install Robusts and Highly Configurable BackupPC

Considering the high-end rising PCs and storage capacity nowadays, it is now practical and cost effective to do backup management and administration to server's local or network storage disk, not like decades ago where you would buy a very costly tape backup drive to backup small enteprise scaled data.

This is where we cover BackupPC.

For some sites, this might be the complete backup solution. For other sites, additional permanent archives could be created by periodically backing up the server to tape. A variety of Open Source systems are available for doing backup to tape.

What is BackupPC?

BackupPC is a high-performance, enterprise-grade system for backing up Linux and WinXX PCs and laptops to a server's disk. BackupPC is highly configurable and easy to install and maintain. Backup is mostly written in Perl and can extract backup date from Samba server, compressed and tarred over ssh/rsh/nfs or rsync. BackupPC is robust, reliable, and highly configurable. BackupPC on Fedora runs as a daemonized server and can work with SMB Samba server for storing backup files. BackupPC can easily be configured from CLI or even from web interface considering your current BackupPC server has HTTP daemon service running with it.

Below are several features and highlights this BackupPC has to offer.

* A clever pooling scheme minimizes disk storage and disk I/O. Identical files across multiple backups of the same or different PCs are stored only once resulting in substantial savings in disk storage and disk I/O.
* One example of disk use: 95 latops with each full backup averaging 3.6GB each, and each incremental averaging about 0.3GB. Storing three weekly full backups and six incremental backups per laptop is around 1200GB of raw data, but because of pooling and compression only 150GB is needed.
* Optional compression support further reducing disk storage. Since only new files (not already pooled) need to be compressed, there is only a modest impact on CPU time.
* No client-side software is needed. The standard smb protocol is used to extract backup data on WinXX clients. On linux clients, tar over ssh/rsh/nfs is used to backup the data. With version 2.0.0, rsync is also supported on any client that has rsync or rysncd.
* A powerful web (http/cgi) user interface allows administrators to view log files, configuration, current status and allows users to initiate and cancel backups and browse and restore files from backups.
* A full set of restore options is supported, including direct restore (via smbclient, tar, or rsync/rsyncd) or downloading a zip or tar file.
* Supports mobile environments where laptops are only intermittently connected to the network and have dynamic IP addresses (DHCP).
* Flexible configuration parameters allow multiple backups to be performed in parallel, specification of which shares to backup, which directories to backup or not backup, various schedules for full and incremental backups, schedules for email reminders to users and so on. Configuration parameters can be set system-wide or also on a per-PC basis.
* Users are sent periodic email reminders if their PC has not recently been backed up. Email content, timing and policies are configurable.
* Tested on Linux, Freenix and Solaris hosts, and Linux, Win95, Win98, Win2000 and WinXP clients.
* Detailed documentation.
* Open Source hosted by SourceForge and freely availble under GPL.

(source: backupPC)

BackupPC can do backup basics, namely

a. Full Backup
b. Incremental Backup
c. Partial Backup
d. Backup Identical Files
e. Backup Policy

BackupPC Installation on Fedora

Yum downloads around 18MB of BackupPC rpm packages including Perl dependencies.

# yum -y backuppc

Default BackupPC User

Part of its installation is creating a default backuppc user. This user is a special BackupPC user that has limited privileges (/sbin/nologin) . Depending on your configuration, you could change this backupPC default privileges.

BackupPC Configuration Files

Configuration files are created into the following folder locations

/etc/BackupPC
/usr/share/BackupPC/
/etc/httpd/conf.d/

Pseudo BackupPC Setup

Backup and modify /etc/BackupPC/config.pl. Modify the lines that tells you about backup server location, mode of backup transport and compression, and some optional but relevant backup details. Save and exit.

# nano -w /etc/BackupPC/config.pl

Backup and modify /etc/BackupPC/hosts . This is the file wherein you will allow computer backup access by adding them to the list. The line format strictly follows columnar fields and should be separated by tabs.

# vi /etc/BackupPC/hosts

Backup and modify /etc/httpd/conf.d/BackupPC.conf and make sure you will be allowed to browse BackupPC web interface.

# vi /etc/httpd/conf.d/BackpPC.conf

Restart Fedora Apache

# service httpd restart

Create your BackupPC web interface user

#  htpasswd -c /etc/BackupPC/apache.users yourusername

The above would ask you your new backuppc password.

Restart BackupPC Daemon Service

# service backuppc restart

To start backuppc between reboot

# chkconfig --list 35 backuppc on

Start your SMB Samba server

# service smb start

To browse BackupPC web interface

# elinks http://localhost/BackupPC

Full BackupPC Documentation is part of its installation

# elinks /usr/share/BackupPC/doc/BackupPC.html
# elinks http://localhost/BackupPC?action=view&type=docs

Complete online backupPc documentation can be easily referenced here.

Backup is highly configurable and effective. It can do different backup types and can transfer them on different modes. Backup hosts can be WinXX or Linux hosts. They could run on different IP address as long as they see both the BackupPC and Samba server. BackupPC users can also be granted restore privileges depending on your configuration and setup needs.

All these days, backing up data would never phased out it is a fallback from having the original data source.

All is done.