In this article I am going to show you how to install and use the rsnapshot backup utility so that you too can have consistent, reliable backups for your Linux system – server or desktop.

Installation

Before you install you will need to make sure you have (at minimum) both rsync and perl installed on your machine. There are a few ways you can install rsnapshot. You can install from source by downloading the latest .tar.gz file (from the rsnapshot download page) and do the following:

1. Open up a terminal.
2. Change to the directory the newly downloaded file his being held.
3. Issue the command tar xvzf rsnapshot-XXX.tar.gz (Where XXX is the release number) to unpack the archive.
4. Issue the command cd rsnapshot-XXX to change into the newly created directory.
5. Issue the command ./configure.
6. Issue the command make to build the software.
7. Issue the command make install to install the software.

You could also download and install the pre-compiled binary (in .rpm, .deb, etc) form and install from that. Another way to install rsync is to the open up your Add Remove Software tool, search for rsync, and install from there.

No matter how you install you will wind up with an executable (rsnapshot) in /usr/bin/ and a configuration file (rsnapshot.conf) in /etc. You are ready to begin configuring your backup.

Configuration

All of the configuration for rsnapshot happens in the /etc/rsnapshot.conf file. Open that up with your favorite text editor (you will need root privileges to do so)  and get ready to get your hands  a little dirty.

Because everyone’s set up is different, I am only going to point you to the sections of the configuration file you need to edit for your needs. The configuration file is very well laid out, so you shouldn’t have any trouble with the configuration. But just in case…

The first section you will need to set up is the SNAPSHOT ROOT DIRECTORY section. This is where you define the location where your snapshots will be stored.

The next section (since we are installing this on Linux) is to uncomment out the cmd_cp directive under the EXTERNAL PROGRAM DEPENDENCIES section. Also, in this section, if you plan on using Secure Shell (ssh) for remote backups, you will need to uncomment the cmd_ssh line.

The next section is the BACKUP INTERVALS section. Here you have three (with an options fourth) options to set up:

• hourly
• daily
• weekly

The default is set up nicely like this:

interval hourly 6
interval daily 7
interval weekly 4

This means you will have six hourly backups (every four hours), seven daily backups (once a day), and four weekly backups (once a week).

The final section you need to configure is the BACKUP POINTS / SCRIPTS section. Here you are going to define what is to be backed up. By default rsnapshot will back up /home, /etc, and /usr/local to the locally defined backup point. You will notice after this section is a very well laid out section of sample backups. Take a look at these closely as they will help you create various types of backups (including remote backups).

Final step – cron

The last thing you need to do (after you save your configuration file) is to set up cron to run the rsnapshot tool. You will want to set up the root users cron for this (so Ubuntu-based distributions will use the command  sudo crontab -e) so issue the command:

crontab -e

and add something like:
0 */4 * * * root /usr/bin/rsnapshot hourly
0 23 * * * root /usr/bin/rsnapshot daily
0 23 * * 6 root /usr/bin/rsnapshot weekly
The above will run rsnapshot hourly ever four hours, daily at 11pm, and weekly on saturday at 11pm.

That’s it. You’re backup is ready to go.

Final thoughts

Make sure you put some thought into your backup plan. After all, it will save you should a disaster strike. The rsnapshot tool is a very handy tool that can take the venerable rsync utility and make it far more useful.

This particular backup solution features: user-friendly graphical interface, cross-platform availability (Linux, Mac, and Windows), flexible backup configurations, backups can be stored nearly anywhere, entire computer backup, one time backups, scheduled backups, file/folder exclusion, and more.

Getting and installing

Main Window

Even though fwbackups can work on multiple OSes, we’re going to just illustrated installing and using on Linux. There is a simple way to install fwbackups because it will most likely be in the repository of your distribution. Open up your Add/Remove Software utility, do a search for fwbackups, select the results, and click apply. When the installation is complete you will find fwbackups in the Preferences sub menu of the System menu on the GNOME desktop. When you first start fwbackups you will see the main window.

The main window is comprised of five “tabs”. The default tab is the Overiew tab which tells you how many backups you have done.

First Step

Backup Sets

The first thing you need to do is add a set to your backup. Let’s say you want to backup your ~/Documents directory. To do this click the New Set button to open up a new window where you configure this set. From this new window you can add either folders or files (you can add multiple files/folders to a single set).

You will also have to add a name to the backup. This is very obvious. In the Name field at the top of the window, enter the name you want to use for the backup.

From this same window (where you add files/folders) you configure the following:

Destination: Where do you want the backup to be stored. In Linux you can store this locally or on a remote server via ssh.

Your backup set

Times: If this is a scheduled backup when do you want it to occur. This is also where you configure the recurrance of the backup for this set.

Options (Simple): The majority of options for the backup set are here. You can configure the backup to be recursive, the format the backup will be in (tar, tar.gz, rsync, etc), how many old copies of the backups to keep, etc.

Options (Advanced): Here you can add commands to run before or after the backup. You can also change the nice value as well as what to exclude from the backup.

Once you have configured your backup set you can test the set by clicking the Backup Set Now button.

You can also do a One Time backup if you need to backup something just once. This set will not be saved to your sets.

Restore

Restore Window

To restore a backup click the Restore button. Depending upon the type of restore you want to do (either locally or remotely) the settings will vary.

To do a remote restore you will use ssh (just like you use in the remote backup). The only downfall is you will have to know the explicite path to the backup file as you can not browse for the file when doing a remote restore.

Once you have everything configured, hit the Start Restore button to fire up your restore.

Final Thoughts

The fwbackups tool is one of the easiest backup utilities I have come across. If you have a need for a cross-platform backup utility fwbackups might very well be the tool to place in your toolkit.