Removing hosts from backuppc

Simply remove the host from the web interface and rm -rf the pc/<host> directory, then wait for the next BackupPC_nightly run - it will remove all superfluous files from the pools.

The path for this directory usually is:

/var/lib/Backuppc/pc/<hostname>

If you want to force the clean-up process, you can remove your host like this:

1. Login to the Backuppc server
2. Remove the host in the Backuppc web-interface (under hosts)
3. remove it's directory /var/lib/Backuppc/pc/<hostname>:

rm -rf /var/lib/Backuppc/pc/<hostname>

4. Shutdown backuppc:

service backuppc stop

5. Change into backuppc:

su - backuppc

6. Run the nightly script:

/usr/share/BackupPC/bin/BackupPC_nightly 0 255

7. Go back to root:

exit

8. Start backuppc again:

service backuppc start

Backuppc and MySQL

The best way to backup a MySql Server using Backuppc is to use a pre-dump script.

you can use $Conf{DumpPreUserCmd} to issue a MysqLDump

Stdout from these commands will be written to the Xfer (or Restore) log file, note that all Cmds are executed directly without a shell, so the prog name needs to be a full path and you can't include shell syntax like redirection and pipes; put that in a script if you need it.

So in our case we would create a script, on the Backuppc client, to dump all databases into a file:

vi /usr/local/sbin/myBkp.sh

and paste the following into it:

#!/bin/bash
MYSQL="$(which mysql)"
MYSQLDUMP="$(which mysqldump)"
DEST="/backup/mysqlDump.sql"
MYSQLUSER="root"
MYSQLPASS="mypassword"
# no need to change anything below...
#####################################################
LOCKFILE=/tmp/myBkup.lock
if [ -f $LOCKFILE ]; then
echo "Lockfile $LOCKFILE exists, exiting!"
exit 1
fi
touch $LOCKFILE
echo "== MySQL Dump Starting $(date) =="
$MYSQLDUMP --single-transaction --user=${MYSQLUSER} --password="${MYSQLPASS}" -A > ${DEST}
echo "== MySQL Dump Ended $(date) =="
rm $LOCKFILE

make the script executable:

chmod +x /usr/local/sbin/myBkp.sh 

and set $Conf{DumpPreUserCmd} with:

$sshPath -q -x -l root $host /usr/local/sbin/myBkp.sh

Now you just have to make shure that Backuppc is getting the /backup folder (or whatever folder you have set in the script) and you can also exclude the /var/lib/mysql folder from backuppc backups.

Backuppc Got unknown type errors

Type 8 are socket files and type 9 is unknown (Solaris door files).
These are transient files that don't need to be backed up since they can't be restored - they are created by the applications that need them.

The warning messages are benign - they simply mean that those files are being skipped.

watch backuppc progress

From the Backuppc server you can check witch files backuppc is using at the moment with:

watch "lsof -n -u backuppc | egrep ' (REG|DIR) ' | egrep -v '( (mem|txt|cwd|rtd) |/LOG)' | awk '{print $9}'"

you can also check the running log with:

/usr/share/backuppc/bin/BackupPC_zcat/var/lib/backuppc/pc/desktop2/XferLOG.z

On the client side you can use:

watch "lsof -n | grep rsync | egrep ' (REG|DIR) ' | egrep -v '( (mem|txt|cwd|rtd) |/LOG)' | awk '{print $9}'"