Rsnapshot for backup?

I am curious if anyone uses rsnapshot for backup.

And if you feel it works well. Or not…

Thank you!

I have used it for many years, both directly to a second HDD on my Linux server, plus routinely as a backup to a second PC on the LAN. Those are automated via chron.

I also occasionally manually backup to a USB drive and store that off-site.

It is very flexible, but as I recall, is not very compatible with “dirvish”, that was previously an IPFire addon. The current addons of bacula & BorgBackup look interesting, but I have not seen the need to explore those in detail.

Windows users need to be aware that rsnapshot uses techniques that are not directly usable on NTFS or (ex)FAT filesystems, although it can maintain a backup of Windows data to a Linux fiilesystem.

1 Like

Hi !
You used it within ipfire ?
I’m using it for all my linux machines to backup on the nfs share of my NAS…
indrectly also ipfire via a linux machine… i would prefer the ipfire to do that directly…

Ciao Gerd

Hi !
OK here we go :slight_smile:

https://www.hoerst.net/ipfire/rsnapshot/

Ciao Gerd

1 Like

Hello!

I use rsnapshot to make my own custom ipfire backup. I also use it to automatically backup a Rocky Linux server daily, weekly, monthly and yearly. I have used it for a few years with no problems.

Regards.

I used rsnapshot for many years. All my scripts where based on this great (though very old) tutorial.

Hello Gerd!

Will you be submitting rsnapshot to the IPFire Development mailing list for review and approval?

1 Like

hi !

I guess no… its to complicated for me…

Ciao Gerd

for what it is worth… you already did the hard part!

1 Like

Uhh you think so… i spent actual mor time in seeting up somehow to make a git commit than preparing rsnapshot :slight_smile: i stil stuck on point 4

i made
gerd@u2204dev:~/develop/ipfire_git/ipfire-2.x$ git commit -a -m “addon rsnapshot”
[master 59d264147] addon rsnapshot
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)

and where i do get the response ? Git should be configured right…

Ciao Gerd

If you were trying to send your patch with a git push then that would not succeed as you won’t have permissions to push directly into the IPFire git repo. I also don’t.

That part that mentions git push in
https://wiki.ipfire.org/devel/git#Push commits

probably needs to be edited as I believe that can only apply to the core developers and I think even for them they submit their patches via email as per

https://wiki.ipfire.org/devel/submit-patches

The approach that has worked successfully for me for a long time, once you have created your commit is the following.

git format-patch -n -o /path to location to store patch in
-n is -1 if there is just a single commit or -3 if there is a set of three commits to be provided as a set etc.

followed by

git send-email /path to patch(s)

for send-mail to work you need to add the following into your .gitconfig file on your system adding in the info for your situation.

[user]
name = Your Name
email = your ipfire dev mailing list email address
[sendemail]
smtpencryption = ssl
smtpserver = submissions.ipfire.org
smtpserverport = 465
smtpuser = ipfire people login username
smtppass = “ipfire people login password”

When you run git send-email it will open up the git email system and all you have to do is press “y” for yes for a single patch submission or “a” for all for a multi patch submission.

The send-email should finish with a 250 OK or something like that.

The other alternative is to use your own mail client to send the patch but you have to make sure that it only uses text and not html and no weird end of line additions. There is a wiki page for how to use Thunderbird,
https://wiki.ipfire.org/devel/send-tb-patches

The preference from the core devs is for git send-email as that is known to use the correct format. Using Thunderbird or some other MUA is feasible but it can take some time to get it set up correctly to be accepted by the IPFire mail system.

Although there are a lot of words above it didn’t take me long to get it working.

OKOK maybe i am to stupid for this…
i cloned repo
made my changes
changed to repo dir
called git format-patch -1 -o ~/git_ipfire_rsnapshot
and the output was
/git_ipfire_rsnapshot/0001-misc-progs-Fix-path-to-killall-binary-in-openvpnctrl.patch
which name had nothing to do with my patches and also content was somthing with openvpn

Ciao Gerd

I was probably not clear enough.

You have to replace n with 1 so your command should be git format-patch -1 -o

I have also realised that the sendemail settings in .gitconfig are not correct. I said to use your IPFire people login and password. That is because I am using an ipfire.org email. You need to use something like the following settings, which are on the basis that you are using gmail.

[user]
name = Your Name
email = your ipfire dev mailing list email address
[sendemail]
smtpencryption = ssl
smtpserver = smtp.gmail.com
smtpserverport = 587
smtpuser = gmail username
smtppass = “gmail password”

If you use a different mail provider then you need to find the smtpserver name for them and the port that they use.

You also need to add a section into your ...ipfire-2.x/.git/config file

[sendemail]
to = development@lists.ipfire.org

That can be left out but then when you run git send-email it will ask for the email address to be used to send to which has to be the development mailing list address. If it is in the .git/config file then whenever you use git send-email it will already know who to send it to.

After making your changes in your local cloned repo you need to run git commit -sv before doing git format-patch

The -s for the commit automatically adds you as the Signed-off-by: tag into the commit and the -v is for verbose so you see in the commit view the changes that you made.

You did a git commit in an earlier posting so I had presumed you would know that you still had to do that. Poor assumption on my behalf. Sorry for that.

Ok thank… i have to notice this procedure that i wont forget…
forget the rest i wrote if you read this i just had the old git config setup, i saw patch arrived in list…
btw: it was nice and to train i would setup also patch for chrony :wink:

Ciao Gerd

on you last message you forgot to say that you have to add the files via git add and also that you have to comment something in the editor otherwise it will be cancelled :slight_smile:

Ciao Gerd

Yes, you are right. It’s amazing how many of the intermediate steps you forget when you are trying to describe something. Need to sit down and actually do the steps.

Anyway glad you managed to overcome things and get a successful submission.

I would definitely write the sequence down somewhere. It will help you remember but also good to have if you don’t do any submissions for a while and then need to remember what it was that you were supposed to do.

Good luck. :+1:

Hi !

I hope anybody will check my patch in the list and will tell me if i forgot something or did something wrong, so i can change this on my next one :slight_smile:
Ciao Gerd

Your patch will get checked and you will have feedback on it. The intent is to respond to all patches that are submitted.

A thing to remember is that the devs that predominantly review patches are a small group that also have day jobs to pay the bills. So I would allow a few days for a reply, and especially when nit is around the time for releasing a Testing or Full Release.

Sometimes there are so many patches submitted that a patch can slip through and get missed. So if after a week or two you haven’t heard anything then I would just raise a reminder about it.

One thing I would recommend is to use the commit message space for input about the patch and what it is for.
As you have no commit message beyond the title I would expect that a few questions could be:-

  • Why should this addon be given space in IPFire. What makes it better than the other backup options that are already available as addons in IPFire.
  • Will this addon be supported by yourself in the long term. Submitting updates as they are released and fixing any bugs with how it has been implemented. Historically addons have been implemented and then the originators have just left them and it has fallen to the devs to do updates etc. An example here is Icinga which is currently on 1.11.4 from 2014. The latest is 2.13.7 but it needs someone who uses Icinga to do the update because the change from version1 series to version2 series had a major change in the way of working of Icinga. No Icinga user has been willing to step forward to update this, although there have been comments made on the forum in the past that it should be updated to the version2 series.
  • Typically the devs are more favoured of having addons with a WUI page for configuring etc as this is the intended modus operandi of IPFire so a question might be do you have any plans to provide a WUI. If yes then why not provide it now with the patch rather than later. If no, why not.

Just some thoughts to pre-warn you.

2 Likes