Hi,
Colin Shorts wrote on 2014-12-17 09:17:58 +0000 [Re: [BackupPC-users] Execute
script before backup]:
> On 17/12/14 07:50, Ibon Castilla wrote:
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> >
> > Hi again,
> >
> > I have tested the workaround proposed by Colin, and I have a comment
> > and a question about it:
> > [...]
> That said, there was a follow-up from Les Mikesell that might work better.
I need to fully agree with this. The suggestion to use BackupPC_serverMesg has
downsides not yet covered here. You lose the scheduling capabilities of
BackupPC. If a backup fails, BackupPC will retry it. Your cron job won't.
BackupPC will keep track of when full backups are required and when
incrementals will do. Your cron job can emulate that by requesting an "auto"
backup instead of an explicit full or incremental, but that won't work together
with BackupsDisable (see below). BackupPC has settings to regulate the number
of simultaneous backups. A backup initiated with a serverMesg counts as user
backup, not as automatically scheduled backup. There is no guarantee how close
to the serverMesg the backup will actually be started.
> > * Comment: the idea was to use BackupPC_serverMesg to launch the
> > backup, and then use that command again to test if the server ended
> > that backup successfully.
> > I've realized that the command just tells the server to launch the
> > backup, but it really doesn't do that action by itself, so I have to
> > ask to the server many times if the backup has finished yet.
Correct. Even worse, it will only *queue* the backup. Depending on
configuration and other backups running, it could be hours before the backup
even *starts*.
This somewhat defeats the whole point, if your VPN is not guaranteed to
survive a long idle period, and even if it is, you could just as well leave
the VPN running permanently. Starting and stopping it suggests that you don't
want it active outside the backup window.
> > Instead of BackupPC_serverMesg I've decided to use BackupPC_dump,
> > because this one does the backup by itself.
By doing that, you lose even more. You do realize that you need to run a
BackupPC_link, and that you cannot safely run that yourself, don't you?
BackupPC will not really be aware of the fact that the backup has been run
outside its control. I believe it will show up in the web interface by virtue
of BackupPC_dump having updated the backups file, but I'm not sure what
statistical values will be maintained correctly and whether automatic
scheduling and error reporting would work.
It's simply not the way BackupPC is designed to work. You're really taking a
central piece of BackupPC and throwing the rest away, or rather, hoping the
rest won't interfere. You might be better advised to just use plain rsync from
the start. That won't give you pooling, compression or a web interface, but it
would at least be a clean and flexible solution.
> > [...]
> > * Question: to use BackupPC_dump, the host must be defined on the host
> > file. [...] avoid that I've been trying to use $Conf{BackupsDisable} on
> > my_host.pl file. If I set that parameter to 1 or 2, then BackupPC_dump
> > complains about it, saying that the host is configured to avoid
> > backups.
A value of 1 should disable scheduled backups while still running manual
backups, but you would have to explicitly request full or incremental backups.
What you are trying to do is not really supported.
> You might be better to leave the backups enabled and just increase the
> ages (FullPeriod and IncrPeriod) from 6.97 and 0.97 respectively, to
> something a little higher, that way the backuppc won't attempt to backup
> the host as long as your scheduled task is working.
Yes, but it also won't *succeed* in backing up the host when the scheduled
task is *not* working, because it won't set up the VPN link, so you don't gain
the fallback you are aiming at. Setting FullPeriod and IncrPeriod to really
high values (say 10000 = almost thirty years) should avoid automatic backups,
unless, of course, something strange happens to your system clock ;-).
Regards,
Holger
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