NAME

backup-reporter - handles several types of backup jobs, and produces a uniform report for each job.

SCRIPT CATEGORIES

UNIX/System_administration

SYNOPSIS

backup-reporter [ -dehlms ] [-t device] [-r recipients] config_file [...]

backup-reporter -lms apollo.conf

backup-reporter -ms hermes.conf

backup-reporter -d apollo.conf

Note: you must use a config file to specifiy what stuff you want to back up.

README

This is a general script for many types of backup jobs. You can use it to configure different types of backups, which can run together or independently of each other. It also formats a nice report for each backup job.

DESCRIPTION

This is a general script for many types of backup jobs. You can use it to make complete system backups, backup a few directory trees, or just backup a few files. You can also do all of these jobs at once. A backup job can target just one host, or several hosts at once. You can use it with ufsdump, dump, tar or pax, whichever works best for your system. You can save your archives to tape or just save them to the local filesystem (the script will organize your archive files by hostname).

The main motivation for writing this script was to manage a variety of different backup jobs for different systems, with each job having a consistent and informative output format. By using config files, I could easily modify the targets of the backup jobs without having to modify the script itself, and conversely, I could easily modify the script itself and have it immediately apply to all backup jobs.

You specify a backup job by using a config file. The config file syntax is a little clumsy, however, sample config files have been placed into the archive for this script on CPAN, so you can probably just modify them to suit your purposes. This archive is kept in the author's directory on CPAN, namely CPAN/authors/id/JNOLAN.

To see what a config file will do, run the script against it using the debugging option -d, and you will see a list of the commands which would be run (they won't be run, just listed).

        C<backup-reporter -dl hermes.conf>
        C<backup-reporter -d hermes.conf>

What this script actually does is construct shell commands on the fly, based on whatever data you have in your config file and configured directly in this script. These shell commands will be calls to ssh, scp, tar, ufsdump, gzip, etc. (You will need to edit this script in order to configure paths to these binaries).

If you use the -m option, then the script takes the text of each command it generated along with its output, formats it nicely into a mail message, and mails it to you at the end of each backup job. It sends special mail messages based on the exit status of the commands it launches.

This script expects to be able to ssh and scp to remote hosts as some user which has enough privileges to read the target files. You will need to set this up on your own. The example config files are set up to open ssh connections as the user root on the remote hosts.

Instructions for downloading, installing and setting up ssh are available at http://www.ssh.fi (http://www.ssh.fi/sshprotocols2/index.html) or http://www.datafellows.com/f-secure.

Invoking the -h option will make the script assume that all hosts in the configuration file are localhosts. This means that instead of attempting to connect to a remote host via ssh, the script will ignore the hostname that is specified in the config file lines, and instead make backup copies of the local directory tree. If you are going to use the -h option to make backups of the local system, you must configure a config file separately from other backup jobs which connect to other hosts. The host name that you use in the config file will still be used for cosmetic purposes, such as in the name of the archive file or in mail messages sent in connection with that backup job.

Although it is possible to use both the -h and the -l option together, (and this script enables this kind of operation), nevertheless, this is not a good idea. It defeats the purpose of backups to keep backup archives of files on the same system where the original files are located. 'Nuff said.

If you like this script and end up using it, please let me know. If you run into problems or errors, I will try to give you a hand with it and/or post bugfixes and improvements back out onto CPAN. Please email me at jpnolan@sonic.net.

PREREQUISITES

This script requires MIME::Entity, which requires the MailTools bundle, which itself requires MIME::Base64. (If I remember correctly... they're all nifty modules, just install all of them.)

THANKS

Darrell A. Schulte suggested the -h option and helped write the code which implements it.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 1998-2000 John Nolan <jpnolan@sonic.net>. All rights reserved. This program is free software. You may modify and/or distribute it under the same terms as Perl itself. This copyright notice must remain attached to the file.

WARRANTY

This script comes with absolutely no warranty.

cpanm backup-reporter

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install backup-reporter