I have multiple shares that are backed-up weekly from one NAS to another. Recently, this has become an issue because all the backups are configured to do a full followed by 3 incremental, which means that they are all doing a full at the same time. At the moment this means they are running for 4 or 5 days continuously!! What I would like to do is stagger the full backups so that they don't all happen at the same time. Maybe I'm missing it, but is there a way to do that? I'm running an RN104 which is backing-up an RN314, both running f/w 6.10.7 btw.

Sandshark wrote: You can try creating the full backups as separate jobs and then editing /etc/cron.d/frontview-backup to change the frequency, but I don't know how that will affect the GUI. And you'd need to be comfortable with the Linux command line to implement it. Any other change via the GUI would likely undo your manual edits, so you'd have to do them again. I've done this something like this with frontview-volumeschedule, though for a different purpose (starting up maintenance tasks on days when my backup NAS were turned on, since they are on a power schedule). You would need to examine backup_jobs.conf in order to determine the job number associated with each backup.

/etc/frontview/backup_jobs.conf. This appears to be something read by the GUI and fvbackup to set up and execute the backups. Items like the frequency appear to be only for the GUI, as /etc/cron.d/frontview-backup does the actual scheduling.

daKlone wrote: 1 0 * * 1 root /frontview/bin/fvbackup 001 &> /dev/null I think this says run job 001 at 00:01 on every Monday. But that's not right, because I need to NOT run it on one of those Mondays...how? I'd set up the full backups to run on the specific week of the month, and the incremental backups to run on other weeks. For instance, if you want the full backups to run on the first week, you can adapt the schedule to 1 0 1-7 * * root [ $(date +\%u) = 1 ] && /frontview/bin/fvbackup 001 &> /dev/null Cron will run this job on the first 7 days of the month, the date check added to the command itself results in the backup portion of the command only running on Monday. While you might think that you can avoid the date check with 1 0 1-7 * 1, you can't. It's been a while since I played with this, but my recollection is that results in the cron job running on days 1-7 of the month and also on every Monday. You can add in months if you need more spacing between the full backups though. Similarly, you can run incremental jobs using 1 0 8-31 * * root [ $(date +\%d) = 1 ] && /frontview/bin/fvbackup 001 &> /dev/null daKlone wrote: 1 0 * * 1 root /frontview/bin/fvbackup 001 &> /dev/null I don't think you started with a schedule created by the NAS web ui. I suggest you do that, and use the first two parameters you see in the NAS-created schedule. My sample was an excerpt of what I see ( 5 00-23/24 * * ) - not sure if the details depend on whether snapshots are running or not, but I am thinking the NAS more likely always uses these parameters for daily backups .

daKlone wrote: When I said an additional Full, I meant that the last job - the one which was Full on week 4 (job_7) - would be repeated on week 5 thereby doing an additional Full. job_1=("F" "I" "I" "I") job_2=("F" "I" "I" "I") job_3=("F" "I" "I" "I") job_4=("F" "I" "I" "I") job_5=("I" "F" "I" "I") job_6=("I" "I" "F" "I") job_7=("I" "I" "I" "F") That wasn't clear from my post, sorry. To clarify, my approach is using days of the month combined with a day of the week to drive the full backup jobs - the four date ranges being 1-7 (week 1) 8-14 (week 2) 21-27 (week 3) 22-28 (week 4) No full backups scheduled for the 29-31, so a full backup would only be run once a month. If you did extend the fourth date range to 22-31, then you would sometimes get repeated full backups for the extended week 4. You could run incremental backups similarly (running 3 incremental backups a month, and skipping the 4th in 5-week months), or you could extend the date range for incremental to 31. Note I don't do this for backups, but I have made this mod for the 4 maintenance functions (disk test, balance, scrub, and defrag). It ensures that they start during the window when the NAS is powered up (per its power schedule). I made another mod to the power off script to make sure the NAS remains powered until the maintenance functions complete (which unfortunately wasn't done by Netgear). daKlone wrote: 1 0 * * 1 /path/to/timekeeper.sh That's all that would be needed, as the script will (when it's finished) do the rest including kicking off fvbackup with the appropriate backup definition number. I use daily custom snapshots on my backup NAS to give retention (currently set to 3 weeks on most of my shares). If you do that, you want to make sure the snapshot schedule is set to either make the snapshot before the backup job starts, or after it finishes (not in the middle of the backup). Mine are set to make the snapshots before the backups start.

Unfortunately, there is no way to do it via the GUI. You can try creating the full backups as separate jobs and then editing /etc/cron.d/frontview-backup to change the frequency, but I don't know how that will affect the GUI. And you'd need to be comfortable with the Linux command line to implement it. Any other change via the GUI would likely undo your manual edits, so you'd have to do them again. I think that not scheduling the full backups via the GUI and then manually creating a separate cron.d entry (/etc/cron.d/monthly-backup, as an example, though putting it in cron.weekly may be better) would likely be a better method. But I don't know if fvbackup (the executable that does the backups) will prevent that from causing multiple simultaneous backups, which could bog down a 104. But since nothing in the cron job seems to prevent that, I suspect that fvbackup is responsible for "stacking up" the backups instead of doing them simultaneously.

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Sandshark
Sensei
Sep 17, 2022
Unfortunately, there is no way to do it via the GUI. You can try creating the full backups as separate jobs and then editing /etc/cron.d/frontview-backup to change the frequency, but I don't know how that will affect the GUI. And you'd need to be comfortable with the Linux command line to implement it. Any other change via the GUI would likely undo your manual edits, so you'd have to do them again.

I think that not scheduling the full backups via the GUI and then manually creating a separate cron.d entry (/etc/cron.d/monthly-backup, as an example, though putting it in cron.weekly may be better) would likely be a better method. But I don't know if fvbackup (the executable that does the backups) will prevent that from causing multiple simultaneous backups, which could bog down a 104. But since nothing in the cron job seems to prevent that, I suspect that fvbackup is responsible for "stacking up" the backups instead of doing them simultaneously.
- StephenB
  Guru - Experienced User
  Sep 17, 2022
  Sandshark wrote:
  
  You can try creating the full backups as separate jobs and then editing /etc/cron.d/frontview-backup to change the frequency, but I don't know how that will affect the GUI. And you'd need to be comfortable with the Linux command line to implement it. Any other change via the GUI would likely undo your manual edits, so you'd have to do them again.
  
  I've done this something like this with frontview-volumeschedule, though for a different purpose (starting up maintenance tasks on days when my backup NAS were turned on, since they are on a power schedule).
  
  You would need to examine backup_jobs.conf in order to determine the job number associated with each backup.
  - daKlone
    Aspirant
    Sep 18, 2022
    Thanks guys, much appreciated. 👍
    
    I've also got my target NAS (the RN104) on a power schedule, so currently it switches on once a week, pulls the backups and then shuts down again (eventually!).
    
    I'll have a look at configuring it using cron.d and no doubt come back with more questions! 😉
StephenB
Guru - Experienced User
Sep 17, 2022
daKlone wrote:

I have multiple shares that are backed-up weekly from one NAS to another. Recently, this has become an issue because all the backups are configured to do a full followed by 3 incremental, which means that they are all doing a full at the same time. At the moment this means they are running for 4 or 5 days continuously!!

What I would like to do is stagger the full backups so that they don't all happen at the same time.

Current settings let you specify a full backup every 2, 3, or 4 weeks. Is that what you mean?

You could change the settings to "never" for a bit, and then set some of the shares to 3 weeks. Then try setting some more back right after the first full backups resume.

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ReadyNAS Backup Scheduling

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