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aVe2000's avatar
aVe2000
Aspirant
Jan 13, 2014

readynas 104: system backup ?

Hello all,

how can i create a weekly system backup to an external usb drive (as a compressed archive i guess) and keep the last 5 or 10 versions before dumping them?
Does anybody know how to do that?

Thanx in advance,
regards.

7 Replies

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  • StephenB's avatar
    StephenB
    Guru - Experienced User
    Frontivew backup won't do that.

    You could use a PC backup program that can back up network shares. That approach can back up the data on the NAS, not the NAS OS itself.

    Or if you are a linux person, you could find/install a suitable utility via ssh. tar is installed already btw.
  • Hello Stephen,

    sorry. I forgot to mark this thread for following. Thanks for your answer. Thats the knowledge state i somehow have, too. I was looking for a ready solution because i thought thats not a new wish and someone else would have done this too.

    I would like to backup only some specil folders e.g. the webdav, webcal folders.

    I know how to do stuff via ssh and i am able to write scripts but i do not know anything about backup tools and make automated scripts.

    So, guys, can someone provide me with that stuff? Btw: one more thing it should do is surviving a os backup.

    Regards
  • aVe2000 wrote:

    I would like to backup only some specil folders e.g. the webdav, webcal folders.

    I know how to do stuff via ssh and i am able to write scripts but i do not know anything about backup tools and make automated scripts.


    You could use crontab and have some script doing "btrfs send/receive" with snapshots (over a SSH-pipe or what you prefer) to an other box with btrfs and same snapshot catalogs.
    Or maybe a "tradinational" tar-backup or a RSync to an other machine (also triggered by crontab) ...
  • Cron is a must go step to automate backups.
    I would rather use bzip2 (--test option is cool) or tar to backup depending on your needs. Rsync can be used but you won't have an archive.
    You can set the backup with the date in its name so they'll stack in the destination folder.

    To delete old backups, this should do (keeps 30 days) :
    find /path -mtime +30 -exec rm {} \;
  • Hello guys,
    Great answers. I now made two backup scripts. One for weekly backups and one for backups every 2 months. I will also include the suggested clean up command.

    Right now i make backups with crontab to a shared folder. From there i can do additional backups to an external drive.

    My backup scripts are stored in that shared too so they are backuped to the external drive too.
    But if i have to factory reset my crontabs will get lost. How can i manage this? File link to the crontab file (if there is one?)?
  • Files: /etc/crontab and/or /var/spool/cron/crontabs/
    Edit with: crontab -e (Tip: export EDITOR=<your favorite editor>)
    Read with: crontab -l
    Backup: crontab -l > /some_path/crontab_backup.txt
  • @ClaesBas: thanx. I'll backup crontab with crontab then, continuously. Thanx.

    Regards

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