RSNAPSHOT-NG

rsnapshot-ng comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.

This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions. See the GNU General Public Licence for details.

Features

rsnapshot-ng is a fork of rsnapshot including some basic improvements and a modern build/test environment.

rsnapshot is a filesystem snapshot utility based on rsync. rsnapshot makes it easy to make periodic snapshots of local machines, and remote machines over ssh/rsyncd.
The code makes extensive use of hard links whenever possible, to greatly reduce the disk space required.
It is written entirely in perl with no module dependencies, and has been tested with versions 5.14 through 5.24. It should work on any reasonably modern UNIX compatible OS.
The HOWTO will give you a detailed walk-through on how to get rsnapshot up and running in explicit detail.

Enhancements

Config files can contain spaces and tabs as delimiters
Pure Perl script without build system - you can used it directly on any device (just modify the config)
rsync output is shown on verbosity level >= 3
Advanced Javascript based testcases

Documentation and References

Some recommended tutorials/usage guides

Package Installation

There are currently two different methods available to install rsnapshot-ng

1. All Systems - from Source

Just download the latest release from GitHub and extract the files in a directory of your choice (/opt/rsnapshot-ng for example).

2. Debian - via Aenon-Dynamics Repository

Add Repository

See AenonDynamics/CPR

Installation

apt-get update
apt-get install rsnapshot-ng

Backward Compatibility

Breaking Changes

The config file syntax has been changed

Deprecated Features

The deprecated config directive interval has been removed (replaced by retain)

System Requirements

Linux based OS
At a minimum: perl (>= 5.14 required), rsync (>=3.1.1 recommended)
Optionally: ssh, logger, GNU cp, GNU du

Config File Syntax

The config file syntax has changed compared to the classic rsnapshot files.

Now it's allowed to use any kind of whitespaces (spaces and tabs) as command/value delimiter. To identify the "new" version you have to set config_version 2.0 (compatibility)

Syntax: keyword value0 [value1 [ value2]]

Paths with Whitespaces

To use whitespaces within paths, just wrap the argument into double-quotes

backup "/etc/my dir with whitespaces" etcbackup/ +rsync_short_args=-z

Usage

Once you have installed rsnapshot, you will need to configure it. The default configuration file is /etc/rsnapshot.conf, although the exact path may be different depending on how the program was installed. If this file does not exist, copy rsnapshot.conf over to /etc/rsnapshot.conf and edit it to suit your tastes. See the docs for the full list of configuration options.

When /etc/rsnapshot.conf contains your chosen settings, do a quick sanity check to make sure everything is ready to go:

Testing your config

$ rsnapshot configtest

Dry-Run - show what will happen

If this works, you can see essentially what will happen when you run it for real by executing the following command (where interval is alpha, beta, etc):

$ rsnapshot -t [interval]

Backups Stages

The number of snapshots that are saved depends on the retain settings in /etc/rsnapshot.conf

retain alpha 6

This means that every time rsnapshot alpha is run, it will make a new snapshot, rotate the old ones, and retain the most recent six (alpha.0 - alpha.5).

Note that the backups are done from the highest interval first (in this case delta) and go down to the lowest interval.
If you are not having cron invoke the alpha snapshot interval, then you must also ensure that alpha is not listed as one of your intervals in rsnapshot.conf (for example, comment out alpha, so that beta becomes the lowest interval).

Remember that it is only the lowest interval which actually does the rsync to back up the relevant source directories, the higher intervals just rotate snapshots around. Unless you have enabled sync_first in your configuration-file, in which case only the sync pseudo-interval does the actual rsync, and all real intervals just rotate snapshots.

Automation via cron

Cronjob Example

Once you are happy with everything, the final step is to setup a cron job to automate your backups. Here is a quick example which makes alpha backups every four hours, beta backups every day, gamma backups every tuesday and delta backups 1st of month

File: /etc/cron.d/rsnapshot

# cron-config - m h dom mon dow <user> <command>

# alpha backups, each 4hours
0 */4 * * * root /usr/bin/rsnapshot alpha

# beta backups, daily @3:00am
0 3 * * * root /usr/bin/rsnapshot beta

# gamma backups, weekly @tuesday 2:40am
40 2 * * 2 root /usr/bin/rsnapshot gamma

# delta backups, monthly 1st @2.20am
20 2 1 * * root /usr/bin/rsnapshot delta

Automation via systemd

rsnapshot-ng comes with systemd based invocation (service+timer) to easily handle backup tasks.

The rsnapshot program is triggerd via a linked systemd-instance service file - therefore you do not need additional service files.

Example: Run Tasks alpha+beta manually

systemctl start rsnapshot@alpha.service
systemctl start rsnapshot@beta.service

Example: Run Task alpha automatically

For each triggerd interval you have to create a custom systemd-timer based on the example below.

File: /etc/systemd/system/rsnapshot-alpha.timer

[Unit]
Description=rsnapshot backup task alpha

[Timer]
# Run rsnapshot interval "alpha" at 04:30 am
OnCalendar=04:30

# do NOT start backup immediately if its missed (servers..)
Persistent=false

# linked unit
Unit=rsnapshot@alpha.service

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

Enable Timer

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable rsnapshot-alpha.timer
systemctl start  rsnapshot-alpha.timer

View Active Timers

systemctl list-timers

NEXT                         LEFT                LAST                         PASSED       UNIT                         ACTIVATES
Fri 2017-11-10 04:30:00 UTC  17h left            n/a                          n/a          rsnapshot-daily.timer        rsnapshot@alpha.service
Tue 2017-11-14 04:00:00 UTC  4 days left         n/a                          n/a          rsnapshot-weekly.timer       rsnapshot@weekly.service
Fri 2017-12-01 03:50:00 UTC  3 weeks 0 days left n/a                          n/a          rsnapshot-monthly.timer      rsnapshot@monthly.service

Example: daily/weekly/monthly schedules

A common used backup scheme/configuration is available within the systemd/ directory including pre-configured timers:

daily timer
weekly timer
monthly timer

Authors

Please see the AUTHORS file for the complete list of contributors.

License

rsnapshot-ng is OpenSource and licensed under the Terms of GNU General Public Licence v2. You're welcome to contribute!

Many Thanks to the contributors of rsnapshot and Mike Rubel author of rsync_snapshots

AenonDynamics / rsnapshot-ng