Generic Backup Scripts For Linux

This tool can create backups of folders and mysql databases. It's simple yet super powerful.

Can backup:

• Filesystem
• MySQL databases

Features:

• Made to be easy to setup, and use for multiple servers.
• Easy to understand and use.
• Rotating backups, select how many backups you want stored for a specific item. Can also be disabled.
• Log files for the backup, you actually know what was done.
• Notifications with pushover when something goes wrong, and possible also to send per successful backup routine.
• Detailed notifications sent via mail when a backup is done (or failed).

Requirements

• git: to install it easily, or just download the zip file.
• php 5.4 or more.
• mysql: if you are going to use the mysql backup feature.

Debian based / Ubuntu, requirements

sudo apt-get install php5 git

Installing

git clone https://github.com/peec/generic-linux-backup-scripts.git /opt/backup-tool
cd /opt/backup-tool
chmod +x install.sh linuxbackups
./install.sh
# Help ?
./linuxbackups
# Help for filesystem backup ?
./linuxbackups backups:filesystem --help
# Help for mysql backup ?
./linuxbackups backups:mysql --help

• The install script will ask you if you want to create a database backup user. It generates a backup user with a random password. Take care of this password as you will need it to configure the database backup user.

Getting started

Creating database backups

Our goal: You want to create daily backups of all your databases, keep 8 backups for the past 8 days.

1. Lets create a directory, where we want to store all our database backups. Lets store them in /opt/backups. /opt/backups folder could be a mounted drive of some kind. But for now we will use a directory on the same server.

   sudo mkdir /opt/backups
   

2. Configure database connection details, put this in /opt/backup-tool/config/database.json

   {
       "backup_path": "/opt/backups/Mysql/Databases",
       "amount_of_backups": 10,
       "database": {
           "user": "backup",
           "password": "PASSWORD FOR BACKUP DB USER",
           "host": "localhost",
           "ignore_databases": ["mysql", "information_schema", "performance_schema"]
       }
   }
   

   • backup_path: this is where we want to store our database backups. You can include %server_name in this path if you want e.g. /opt/backups/%server_name/Mysql/Databases if you have multiple servers connected to that folder.
   • amount_of_backups: the amount of backups we want to keep.
   • database:
     • user: The username of your backup user. You can also use root, but creating a backup user is recommended.
     • password: The password for the backup user.
     • host: The hostname of the mysql db.
     • ignore_databases: Ignores the array of databases, you should ignore the built in databases such as mysql, performance_schema, information_schema. You can also ignore other databases if you want to exclude them.

3. Lets test that our configuration works:

   /opt/backup/linuxbackups backups:mysql --backup-file-prefix="daily" --notifications-when-done
   # Are there any backups?
   ls -al /opt/backups/Mysql/Databases
   

   • The --notifications-when-done will send notification to email or pusher when the backup is done. If this flag is not present it will only send notifications if the backup routine failed. Note that notifications are only sent if you configured config/config.yml
   • The --backup-file-prefix="daily" creates a namespace for the current backup routine. This is useful if you also want for example hourly backups.

4. Automate the daily backup routine, we will do this with cron:

   sudo EDITOR=nano crontab -e
   

   and now add this line, which will run daily backup routine every day at midnight.

   00 00 * * * /opt/backup-tool/linuxbackups backups:mysql --backup-file-prefix="daily" --notifications-when-done
   

5. Lets configure so that the backup routine emails us the notification reports:

   sudo nano /opt/backup-tool/config/config.yml
   

   And configure the mailer

   # EMAIL NOTIFICATIONS:
   # To enable email notifications, uncomment below:
   mailer:
       send_to: [email protected]
       transport: gmail
       gmail:
           username: [email protected]
           password: Mygmailpassword
   

Restoring databasebackups:

cd /path/to/my/backups
gunzip the-file-you-want-to-restore.gz
mysql -u root -p DataBaseThatShouldGetTheImportedSQL < the-file-you-want-to-restore

Filesystem backup

Default configuration:

{
    "backup_path": "/home/dropbox/Dropbox/Servers/%server_name/Sites",
    "amount_of_backups": 8,
    "directories": {
        "somesite": ["/home/www-data/vhosts/no/somesite/images", "/and/another/dir/related/to/somesite"],
        "someothersite": ["/home/...."]
    }
}

Automated backups

This script runs daily backups of filesystem and databases, it also runs hourly backup of dbs where we store 8 backups of the hourly onces.

crontab -e

# m h  dom mon dow   command
00 00 * * * /home/dropbox/backup/linuxbackups backups:filesystem --backup-file-prefix="daily"
00 00 * * * /home/dropbox/backup/linuxbackups backups:mysql --backup-file-prefix="daily"
0 * * * *   /home/dropbox/backup/linuxbackups backups:mysql --backup-file-prefix="hourly" --setting.amount_of_backups=8

Dropbox

See Tutorial on Automatic Backups to Dropbox On Linux Distributions

Notifications

You must configure /opt/backup-tool/config/config.yml so we know where to send emails / pushover.

Use --notifications-when-done if you want to send info notifiers aswell.

Mail

Mail notifications will be more detailed, see config/config.yml.dist. If you use gmail transport, please enable IMAP on your gmail account.

Pushover

Summed up notifications can be sent with pushover.

See config/config.yml.dist.