Back up with rdiff

Use the rdiff tool for backup operations.

Read time 3 minutes

Last updated 10 months ago

Use

rdiff

on a Linux machine to perform both cold copy backups and hot copy backups.

rdiff

uses a

dst tmp aux

folder to store the full backup. At the beginning of each week,

rdiff

resets the folder and creates a new backup. Each following day of the week,

rdiff

uses

rdiff-backup

to add incremental backups. Every day, the contents of the

dst tmp aux

folder is compressed into a

tar.gz

file and stored in a

week_xx

folder, which replaces any older

tar.gz

files in that folder.

Commands

Create backups

Create a backup. If you reuse the target path, you create an incremental backup.


sudo rdiff-backup "/media/codice/New Volume/jet_ubuntu" "/media/codice/New Volume/rdiff_backups/"

List backups

List the incremental backups stored that you can restore them later:


sudo rdiff-backup --list-increments "/media/codice/New Volume/rdiff_backups/rep_4"[sudo] password for codice:Found 3 increments:rep_4.2017-01-16T08:28:58-08:00.dir Mon Jan 16 08:28:58 2017rep_4.2017-01-16T09:34:15-08:00.dir Mon Jan 16 09:34:15 2017rep_4.2017-01-17T01:54:14-08:00.dir Tue Jan 17 01:54:14 2017Current mirror: Tue Jan 17 02:01:13 2017

Restore an incremental backup

The following command restores the last backup prior to 8 hours and 30 minutes ago. The example uses the

--tempdir

path to avoid using the system temp path and running out of space on the disk.


sudo rdiff-backup -r 8h30m --force --tempdir "/media/codice/New Volume/tmp_path" "/media/codice/NewVolume/rdiff_backups/rep_4" "/media/codice/New Volume/jet_ubuntu/rep_4"

Cold copy example

This example shows the setup for a weekly and incremental backup using

rdiff-backup

on a Linux machine:

Install
```
rdiff-backup 1.2.8
```
in your server.
Configure
```
autofs
```
to auto mount backup
```
NFS
```
folder in the
```
/cifs/backup
```
folder.
Add a cron job that executes everyday at 3:30 AM local time:


#!/bin/bashexport weekNumber='date +%V'export year='date +%Y'export today='date +%Y%m%d'export lastActinLogFile="/root/backup_jet.log"export dirName="week_$weekNumber"export baseBackupDstLocation="/cifs/backup/backups/myserver_jet"export backupFinalDstLocation="$baseBackupDstLocation/$year/$dirName"export weekIncrementsTarGzDstFile=$backupFinalDstLocation/myserver_ddbb_jetfs.rdiff-backup_$year_week_$weekNumber.tar.gz#rdiff-backup source and destination paramsexport srcJetFolder="/home/mydata/jet"#export rdiffBackupWeekIncrementsAuxDir="/home/mydata/local_jet_backup_rsync"export rdiffBackupWeekIncrementsAuxDir="$baseBackupDstLocation/tmp"echo "starting daily backup $today on dst dir: $backupFinalDstLocation" > $lastActionLogFile#when a new week starts, reset the increments dst dir so rdiff-backup starts a fresh backup from scratchif [ ! -d "$backupFinalDstLocation" ]; then  mkdir -p $backupFinalDstLocation  #reset weekly backup local folder  rm -rf $rdiffBackupWeekIncrementsAuxDirfiecho "about to stop and targz $today" > $lastActionLogFile/usr/sbin/plasticsd stopsleep 20rdiff-backup $srcJetFolder $rdiffBackupWeekIncrementsAuxDirrm $weekIncrementsTarGzDstFiletar cvzf $weekIncrementsTarGzDstFile  $rdiffBackupWeekIncrementsAuxDirsleep 20/usr/sbin/plasticsd startecho "done! $today" > $lastActionLogFile

Hot copy example

As this is a hot copy, you need to switch the server between normal and read-only modes (

cm admin readonly

Install
```
rdiff-backup 1.2.8
```
in your server.
Configure
```
autofs
```
to automount backup
```
NFS
```
folder in the
```
/cifs/backup
```
folder.
Add a cron job:


#!/bin/bashexport weekNumber='date +%V'export year='date +%Y'export today='date +%Y%m%d'export lastActinLogFile="/root/backup_jet.log"export dirName="week_$weekNumber"export baseBackupDstLocation="/cifs/backup/backups/myserver_jet"export backupFinalDstLocation="$baseBackupDstLocation/$year/$dirName"export weekIncrementsTarGzDstFile=$backupFinalDstLocation/myserver_ddbb_jetfs.rdiff-backup_$year_week_$weekNumber.tar.gz#rdiff-backup source and destination paramsexport srcJetFolder="/home/mydata/jet"export rdiffBackupWeekIncrementsAuxDir="$baseBackupDstLocation/tmp"echo "starting daily backup $today on dst dir: $backupFinalDstLocation" > $lastActionLogFile#when a new week starts, reset the increments dst dir so rdiff-backup starts a fresh backup from scratchif [ ! -d "$backupFinalDstLocation" ]; then  mkdir -p $backupFinalDstLocation  #reset weekly backup local folder  rm -rf $rdiffBackupWeekIncrementsAuxDirfiecho "about to stop and targz $today" > $lastActionLogFilecm admin readonly entersleep 20rdiff-backup $srcJetFolder $rdiffBackupWeekIncrementsAuxDirrm $weekIncrementsTarGzDstFiletar cvzf $weekIncrementsTarGzDstFile  $rdiffBackupWeekIncrementsAuxDirsleep 20cm admin readonly leaveecho "done! $today" > $lastActionLogFile

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