Question

Backup users home directories via Rsync

Asked by: subz0r69z0r

Hi all,

I have an OpenSUSE terminal server and I would like to backup users home directories every day via Cron and Rsync. I am looking for a script or set of scripts that will enable me to do the following:

- Mount a NAS server at the start of the script. An example mount point would be:

/mnt/backup/home/

- Rsync to mirror users /home directories to the NAS based on some sort of username variable. If the user doesn't exist I would like it to be created on the NAS. For example there might be three users on the system: joebloggs, suzyshoe and ritasmith with their home directories at /home/joebloggs etc. Rsync would have to pull the username from the /home/<username> path and use it as a directory path on the NAS

- Depending on the day, it would need to go in to a subdirectory of the username based on the day.

on the NAS it would look like:

//NAS/backup/home/<username>/monday
//NAS/backup/home/<username>/tuesday
...

To save me having to go and create every single <day> folder I would prefer if this was automatically created the first time it is ran for that user.

- After the first lot of backups, subsequent backups on that day would have to overwrite the data that was there the week before.

- Unmount the NAS at the completion of the script.

I hope this makes sense. If I could put this all in one script using some sort of %day% like variable that would be preferable, but if I had to make one for each day that would be fine as long as cron had a way to differentiate between the scripts on different days.

I am fairly new to this so just let me know if you need more information or if I am not making any sense.

At the end of the day I would like to know that I can add a user to the system and automatically a directory for that user will be created on the NAS and their files backed up depending on the day.

Thanks!!

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Asked On: 2008-07-16 at 20:25:53ID23572007
Tags: Rsync
Topics: rSync Backup Utility
,; Linux
,; Linux Administration
Participating Experts: 2
Points: 500
Comments: 7

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Answers

by: TintinPosted on 2008-07-16 at 23:36:48ID: 22022797

Something along the lines of

#!/bin/bash
mount=/mnt/backup/home
mount nas-server:/NAS/backup $mount
 
cd /home
 
for user in *
do
  dir=$mount/$user/$(date +%A)
  mkdir -p $dir 2>/dev/null
  rsync -av --delete $user/* $dir
done

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by: subz0r69z0rPosted on 2008-07-17 at 15:54:02ID: 22031143

Hi,

Thanks for that. I am not too sure how to set up the 'mount nas-server' part though as I forgot to mention that I am mounting the NAS via SMB. I modified the script a tiny bit and it appears to have worked.... I am not 100% sure that is has copied across everything but it looks OK. On the //NAS as directory for each user was created and under a subdirectory was "Friday". Please see below for the script and output of that script. I am not entirely sure if the mount= and the mount nas-server: are now needed, if you could tidy the script up for me I would be thankful.

If I am reading the output right, it is mainly complaining about symlinks and the lost+found directory (and something about mkstemp). If there was a way to exlude copying symlinks and the lost+found directory that should significantly reduce the error output?

Thanks for your support.

(note: There are quite a few more 'joeblogg' users that it has not complained about and has copied accross their bin/ Documents/ and public_html/ directories over fine. This is because those users have never logged in to the system before).

#!/bin/bash
 
mount -t cifs //192.168.1.21/backup/home /mnt/backup/home -ocredentials=/etc/smb.secret
 
mount=/mnt/backup/home
mount nas-server://192.168.1.21/backup/ $mount
 
cd /home
 
for user in *
do
  dir=$mount/$user/$(date +%A)
  mkdir -p $dir 2>/dev/null
  rsync -avz --delete $user/* $dir
done
 
umount -f /mnt/backup/home
 
 
--
 
mount: can't get address for nas-server
rsync: symlink "/mnt/backup/home/joebloggs/Friday/Desktop/Home.desktop" -> "/opt/kde3/share/applications/kde/Home.desktop" failed: Operation not supported (95)
rsync: symlink "/mnt/backup/home/joebloggs/Friday/Desktop/Thunderbird.desktop" -> "/usr/share/applications/MozillaThunderbird.desktop" failed: Operation not supported (95)
rsync: symlink "/mnt/backup/home/joebloggs/Friday/Desktop/campbelltown" -> "/data/nsw/campbelltown" failed: Operation not supported (95)
rsync: symlink "/mnt/backup/home/joebloggs/Friday/Desktop/nsw" -> "/data/nsw/" failed: Operation not supported (95)
rsync error: some files could not be transferred (code 23) at main.c(977) [sender=2.6.9]
rsync: mkstemp "/mnt/backup/home/cts/Friday/hplip-2.8.5/.hplip-install_Mon-19-May-2008_14:39:56.log.HiSWCi" failed: Not a directory (20)
rsync: mkstemp "/mnt/backup/home/cts/Friday/hplip-2.8.5/.hplip-install_Mon-19-May-2008_14:43:20.log.xAXkXl" failed: Not a directory (20)
rsync: mkstemp "/mnt/backup/home/cts/Friday/hplip-2.8.5/.hplip-install_Mon-19-May-2008_14:53:57.log.V9ixkp" failed: Not a directory (20)
rsync error: some files could not be transferred (code 23) at main.c(977) [sender=2.6.9]
rsync: symlink "/mnt/backup/home/joebloggs1/Friday/Desktop/users" -> "/users/" failed: Operation not supported (95)
rsync error: some files could not be transferred (code 23) at main.c(977) [sender=2.6.9]
rsync: symlink "/mnt/backup/home/joebloggs2n/Friday/Desktop/Firefox.desktop" -> "/usr/share/applications/MozillaFirefox.desktop" failed: Operation not supported (95)
rsync: symlink "/mnt/backup/home/joebloggs3/Friday/Desktop/Home.desktop" -> "/opt/kde3/share/applications/kde/Home.desktop" failed: Operation not supported (95)
rsync: symlink "/mnt/backup/home/joebloggs4/Friday/Desktop/PRONTO+Thin+Client.desktop" -> "/opt/cxoffice/support/pronto/desktopdata/cxmenu/xdg-applications/Windows+Applications/PRONTO+Thin+Client.desktop" failed: Operation not supported (95)
rsync: symlink "/mnt/backup/home/joebloggs4/Friday/Desktop/Thunderbird.desktop" -> "/usr/share/applications/MozillaThunderbird.desktop" failed: Operation not supported (95)
rsync: symlink "/mnt/backup/home/joebloggs4n/Friday/Desktop/data" -> "/data" failed: Operation not supported (95)
rsync error: some files could not be transferred (code 23) at main.c(977) [sender=2.6.9]
rsync: symlink "/mnt/backup/home/joebloggs5/Friday/Desktop/Home.desktop" -> "/opt/kde3/share/applications/kde/Home.desktop" failed: Operation not supported (95)
rsync: symlink "/mnt/backup/home/joebloggs5/Friday/Desktop/PRONTO+Thin+Client.desktop" -> "/opt/cxoffice/support/pronto/desktopdata/cxmenu/xdg-applications/Windows+Applications/PRONTO+Thin+Client.desktop" failed: Operation not supported (95)
rsync: symlink "/mnt/backup/home/joebloggs5/Friday/Desktop/Thunderbird.desktop" -> "/usr/share/applications/MozillaThunderbird.desktop" failed: Operation not supported (95)
rsync: symlink "/mnt/backup/home/joebloggs5/Friday/Desktop/data" -> "/data" failed: Operation not supported (95)
rsync error: some files could not be transferred (code 23) at main.c(977) [sender=2.6.9]
rsync: link_stat "/home/lost+found/*" failed: No such file or directory (2)
rsync: ERROR: cannot stat destination "/mnt/backup/home/lost+found/Friday": Not a directory (20)
rsync error: errors selecting input/output files, dirs (code 3) at main.c(507) [receiver=2.6.9]
rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (8 bytes received so far) [sender]
rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(453) [sender=2.6.9]

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by: TintinPosted on 2008-07-17 at 16:16:38ID: 22031253

It does make a difference being a samba link, so you should remove the mount commands I gave you.

rsync has many options for including/excluding items.

To ignore symbolic links, use the --safe-links option and to ignore certain files/directories, use the --exclude option.

So putting it all together, you have

#!/bin/bash
mount=/mnt/backup/home
mount -t cifs //192.168.1.21/backup/home $mount -ocredentials=/etc/smb.secret
 
 
cd /home
 
for user in *
do
  dir=$mount/$user/$(date +%A)
  mkdir -p $dir 2>/dev/null
  rsync --safe-links --exclude=mkstemp -avz --delete $user/* $dir
done
 
umount -f $mount

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by: subz0r69z0rPosted on 2008-07-17 at 16:30:04ID: 22031307

Thank you for that, it has worked well and I will soon accept your solution.

Just a quick one though, do you have any idea what the last 3 lines out output from rsync means? Is it anything to worry about?

rsync error: errors selecting input/output files, dirs (code 3) at main.c(507) [receiver=2.6.9]
rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (8 bytes received so far) [sender]
rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(453) [sender=2.6.9]

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by: TintinPosted on 2008-07-18 at 01:19:37ID: 22033718

I'm not entirely sure what the errors mean. Does this occur right at the end?

You could try adding the --stats flag to rsync to give you a summary of the transfer when it has finished.
Additionally you could add the --progress flag to see the transfer progress of individual files.

by: subz0r69z0rPosted on 2008-07-20 at 20:22:54ID: 31477345

Thanks :)

by: brian_summitPosted on 2009-02-25 at 15:36:37ID: 23739904

Great script. Thanks. Is there an easy way to tweak this so you only have 1 full backup and the rest of the days are incremental backups?

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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Backup users home directories via Rsync

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