mobi_backup

MOBI Backup (rsync wrapper)

like probably every Linux admin, I eventually came to the point where I felt like it was time to write My Own Backup Implementation as an rsync wrapper to do some backups. This script is in its funcitonality very similar to what rubi does: it creates a new sub-directory with the date of the backup as directory each time the backup is run. every backup directory contains a full backup of the source, but only the difference since the last backup does actually need to be synced. when i say the difference i mean files that have changed.. yes, files, not blocks! so if your 2GB log file gets a new line, 2GB will have to be downloaded. but if your file does not change, it will be hard-linked to the previous backup and therefore nothing needs to be downloaded.

to achieve this, I use rsync's –link-dst option.

In most cases, this proves to be simple but still efficient enough, rather than trying block-level incrementals.

One specialty of MOBI, and the main reason for writing this script in the first place, is that it runs multiple backups in parallel. It has sort of its own queue manager to do that. It will take all Job Definitions and put them in the queue and it will then run multiple in parallel. The number of parallel backup processes can be defined by setting the PARALLELPROCS=8 variable in the script. Default is 8.

The advantage of running multiple backup jobs at once is, that you can usually reach a much higher overall throughput with multiple rsyncs running in parallel than running them one after the other because rsync is single threaded and the overhead for ssh and file checking etc. is huge. So it usually makes no sense to wait for one host to complete before backing up a second host.
You could also define multiple backup jobs for the same host but different directories on the host, to increase the speed of large backups.

if you are looking for a solution to speed up an rsync copy process with parallel rsync invocations, take a look at my parallel_rsync article. Sadly the function I wrote there does not help in speeding up incremental backups at all (in contrary, it adds more overhead and hence makes an incremental backup even slower!).

at the end of a successful backup, a rotation is made and old backups are being deleted where appropriate. also a summary email is sent to the admin.

Configuration

to configure, simply edit the lines or add more blocks after the 

##############################################################
### Backup Job Definitions start here  #######################
##############################################################

comment in the script. some lines above the comment you can find different config options mixed with some code that should not be changed ;).. i know.. usability and such wasn't the main focus here but instead i wanted to keep everything in a file and as simple as possible to read the code and modify it to your own needs.

the script will write a hidden file named .lastdst to the backup base directory for each backup job. this file always contains the folder name of the sub directory of the last successful backup.

Logs and Debugging

the script writes multiple log files. First of all it writes a new log file for every invocation to /tmp/<date-time>.log. this is a general log which contains information printed by the “queue manager”. It then writes two log files for each backup job it runs. these can be found in the same directory where these backup jobs are stored (defined by BASEDST) again with the start date and time of the job. one ends on log the other one ends on .err. the .log file contains the standard-output of the process and the err file contains the standard-error output. so if copying a file failed for example it should be listed in the err file.

Known Issues

On systems with old rsync versions (i.e. 3.0.6) and if your data contains extended Attributes or ACL's you may get lots of Missing abbreviated xattr value, trusted.SGI_ACL_DEFAULT messages in your logs. Also your backup may get bloatet because files with ACL's or extended Attributes are constantly re-downloaded. This is due to some issues with ACL and Xattr support in old rsync versions. Either update to a newer version of Rsync or disable ACL and XATTR support by removing the -X and -A options in the bash script, that means, replace rsync -aAHXv with rsync -aHv. This will disable ACL and XATTR support which menans, such attributes won't be backed up.

the script

so here is the script.. use it at your own risk and let me know if you find bugs or have contributions to make. simply send me an email to contact at psuter dot ch.

mobi.sh
#!/bin/bash
# (c) Pascal Suter, DALCO AG, 2018. Use at your own risk 
# no use without prior permission from DALCO AG
# pascal.suter@dalco.ch 
# the latest version and some documentation for this script can be found on http://wiki.psuter.ch/doku.php?id=mobi_backup
# version 1.1 
# replaced ps aux | grep rsync style locking with flock locking to allow this script to run on servers that use rsync for other stuff as well :) 
# version 1.2
# added eval in front of rsync call to properly evaluate the $OPTIONS variable contents when running the command
# version 1.3
# moved log from rsyncs stderr to a separate .err file which makes finding the relevant error messages in the rsync output alot easier 
 
report() {
	LOG=$1
	error=0
	# get all jobs that where started
	jobs=`grep "^Backup of" $LOG | awk '{print $3}'`
	# get all jobs that where successfully completed
	successful_jobs=`grep "^Backup for .* completed successfully" $LOG | awk '{print $3,"finished on",$7,$8,$9,$10,$11}'`
	# get all jbos that did not complete
	failed_jobs=`grep "^Backup failed" $LOG | awk '{print $4,"stopped on",  $15,$16,$17,$18,$19,$20}' | tr -d ",()"`
	# get remainig jobs without status report
	remaining_jobs="$jobs"
	for job in `echo -e "$successful_jobs" | awk '{print $1}'`; do 
		remaining_jobs=`echo -e "$remaining_jobs" | sed -e "s/$job$//"`
	done
	for job in `echo -e "$failed_jobs" | awk '{print $1}'`; do 
		remaining_jobs=`echo -e "$remaining_jobs" | sed -e "s/$job$//"`
	done
	remaining_jobs=`echo -e "$remaining_jobs" | sed -e '/^$/d'`
 
	# write a report summary
	echo "################################################"
	echo "Backup report for ${1}"
	echo "################################################"
	if [ "$remaining_jobs" != "" ]; then
		error=1
		echo "================================================ "
		echo "== Jobs in an unknown state (still running?) === "
		echo "================================================ "
		echo -e "$remaining_jobs"
	fi
	if [ "$failed_jobs" != "" ]; then
		error=1
		echo "================================================ "
		echo "== Failed Jobs ================================= "
		echo "================================================ "
		echo -e "$failed_jobs"
	fi
	echo "================================================ "
	echo "== Jobs successfully completed ================= "
	echo "================================================ "
	echo -e "$successful_jobs"
	echo "================================================ "
	echo "== Jobs started ================================ "
	echo "================================================ "
	echo -e "$jobs"
	if [ $error -gt 0 ]; then
		SUBJECT="FAIL"
	else 
		SUBJECT="SUCCESS"
	fi
}
 
rotate() {
	# remove old backups and keep only a certain amount of consecutive and monthly backups
	# parameters: 
	# arg 1: number of successful consecutive backups to keep (max. 1 per day will be kept,
	#        if there is more than one backup per day, the newest will be kept, the rest will be deleted 
	# arg 2: number of successful monhthly backups to keep 
	#        keeps last backup of the month starting on the month befor the oldest 
	#        of the consecutive backups that have been kept back
	# arg 3: directory
 
	olddir=`pwd`
	numConsec=$1
	numMonthly=$2
	dir="$3"
	if [ $numConsec -lt 1 ]; then
		echo "first argument of rotate() should be number of consecutive backups to keep. number given was smaller than 1, this must be a mistake!"
		exit 1
	fi
 
	if [ ! -d "$dir" ]; then
		echo "the third argument of rotate() should be the backup directory to clean up. the given directory does not exist"
		exit 1
	fi
	cd "$dir"
	echo "Starting Cleanup Process for `pwd`"
 
	# get all successful backups
	backups=`grep -l "completed successfully" *.log | sort | sed -e 's/.log$//'`
 
	# keep the last $numConsec consecutive backups
	keep=`echo "$backups" | awk -F - '{print $1}' | grep -v -P "^\s*$" | uniq | tail -n $numConsec`
 
	# check if we even have more than $numConsec backups yet: 
	if [ `echo "$backups" | wc -l` -lt $numConsec ]; then
		echo "we do not have enough backups to start deleting yet"
		exit 0
	fi
 
	# get the oldest of the last $numConsec backups: 
	lastdate=`echo "$keep" | head -n 1`
	lastyear=`echo $lastdate | awk -F . '{print $1}'`
	lastmonth=`echo $lastdate | awk -F . '{print $2}'`
	lastday=`echo $lastdate | awk -F . '{print $3}'`
 
	# calculate the last $numMonthly months to keep: 
	month=$lastmonth
	year=$lastyear
	for i in `seq 1 $numMonthly`; do 
	 	month=`expr $month + 0`
		let month--
		if [ $month -lt 1 ]; then 
			month=12
			let year--
		fi
		month=`printf "%02d\n" $month`
		keep=`echo -e "$keep\n$year.$month"`
	done
	keepdates=""
	for i in $keep ; do 
		latest=`echo "$backups" | grep "^$i" | tail -n 1`
		keepdates=`echo -e "$keepdates\n$latest"`
	done
 
	keepdates=`echo "$keepdates" | grep -v -P "^\s*$"`
 
	delete=`ls *.log | sed -e 's/.log$//' | sort | uniq`
	delbackups=$backups
	for i in $keepdates; do 
		delete=`echo "$delete" | grep -v "$i"`
		delbackups=`echo "$delbackups" | grep -v "$i"`
	done
 
	delbackups=`echo "$delbackups" | grep -v -P "^\s*$"`
 
	echo "All Backups:"
	echo "$backups"
	echo "==============================="
	echo "Backups to delete:"
	echo "$delbackups"
	echo "==============================="
	echo "Backups to keep:"
	echo "$keepdates"
 
	#sanity check before deleting backups: check if enough backups will be left after deleting everything else
	numBD=`echo "$delbackups" | wc -l`
	numBT=`echo "$backups" | wc -l`
	survivors=`expr $numBT - $numBD`
	if [ $survivors -lt $numConsec ]; then
		echo "ERROR: somehow too many backups would have been deletd, this should not happen!, aborting"
		exit 1
	else 
		echo "$survivors backups will be left after deleting obsolete backups" 
	fi
 
	echo "$delete" | xargs -I DDD /bin/bash -c 'echo "deleting DDD*"; rm -rf --one-file-system DDD*'
	echo "cleanup complete for `pwd`"
}
 
run() {
	echo "Backup of $BACKUPNAME was queud on Position $INTPROCID";
	keepWaiting=1
	while [ $keepWaiting -gt 0 ]; do
		keepWaiting=0
		#check if enough processes that where launched before me  have finished for me to start my work
		for ((i=1; i<=$(expr $INTPROCID - $PARALLELPROCS); i++)); do
			if [ `grep -c " $i " /dev/shm/backup_finished` -eq 0 ]; then
				keepWaiting=1
			fi
		done
		#echo "waiting patiently to start the backup of $BACKUPNAME with my ID $INTPROCID"
		sleep 5
	done	
 
 
	processes=`lsof ${LOCKDIR}/* 2>/dev/null | grep -v flock | grep backup | awk -F / '{print $NF}' | sort | uniq | wc -l`
 
	while [ $processes -gt $PARALLELPROCS ]; do
		echo "Waiting for another rsync to complete before I can start with ${BACKUPNAME}."
		sleep 10
		processes=`lsof ${LOCKDIR}/* 2>/dev/null | grep -v flock | grep backup | awk -F / '{print $NF}' | sort | uniq | wc -l`
	done
 
	echo "Starting Backup for ${BACKUPNAME} at `date`" | tee -a ${BASEDST}/${DSTDIR}.log
 
	mkdir -p ${BASEDST}
 
	# read the .lastdst file and check if it is either empty (full backup) or if it contains a valid directory (incremental backup). 
	#if it is not empty and the content is not the name of a directory, the backup will be aborted
 
	OLDDST="`cat $BASEDST/.lastdst 2>/dev/null`"
 
	go=1
	if [ -n "$OLDDST" ]; then
		if [ ! -d "${BASEDST}/${OLDDST}" ]; then
			echo "the given last destination $OLDDST does not exist, will not proceed with the backup in order to not accidently do a full backup" 
			go=0
		fi
	fi
 
	if [ $go -eq 1 ]; then 
	    echo "flock -E 66 -n ${LOCKDIR}/${BACKUPNAME} rsync -aAHXv ${OPTIONS} --relative --delete --numeric-ids --bwlimit=${BWLIMIT} --progress --link-dest="../${OLDDST}" --one-file-system ${SOURCE} ${BASEDST}/current >> ${BASEDST}/${DSTDIR}.log 2>${BASEDST}/${DSTDIR}.err" 
		eval flock -E 66 -n ${LOCKDIR}/${BACKUPNAME} rsync -aAHXv ${OPTIONS} --relative --delete --numeric-ids --bwlimit=${BWLIMIT} --progress --link-dest="../${OLDDST}" --one-file-system ${SOURCE} ${BASEDST}/current >> ${BASEDST}/${DSTDIR}.log 2>${BASEDST}/${DSTDIR}.err
		ret=$?
	else
		ret=1
	fi
 
	if [ $ret -eq 0 -o $ret -eq 24 ]; then
		mv ${BASEDST}/current ${BASEDST}/${DSTDIR}
		echo -n ${DSTDIR} > ${BASEDST}/.lastdst
		if [ $ret -eq 0 ]; then
			echo "Backup for ${BACKUPNAME} completed successfully at `date`"| tee -a ${BASEDST}/${DSTDIR}.log
		else 
			echo "Backup for ${BACKUPNAME} completed successfully at `date` but some files vanished before they could be copied"| tee -a ${BASEDST}/${DSTDIR}.log
		fi
		echo "rotating old backups" | tee -a ${BASEDST}/${DSTDIR}.log
		rotate "$KEEPC" "$KEEPM" "$BASEDST" >> ${BASEDST}/${DSTDIR}.log
		echo "rotation completed at `date`"| tee -a ${BASEDST}/${DSTDIR}.log
	elif [ $ret -eq 66 ]; then
		echo "there are other rsync jobs running for this host, skipping backup this time" | tee -a ${BASEDST}/${DSTDIR}.log
		echo -n "$INTPROCID " >> /dev/shm/backup_finished
		exit 1;
	else
		echo "Backup failed for ${BACKUPNAME} with errorcode ${ret}, keeping current progress to continue next time (`date`). to debug check ${BASEDST}/${DSTDIR}.err"| tee -a ${BASEDST}/${DSTDIR}.log
	fi
 
	echo -n "$INTPROCID " >> /dev/shm/backup_finished
	exit
}
 
start(){
	mkdir -p ${LOCKDIR} 2>/dev/null
	INTPROCID=`expr $INTPROCID + 1`
	echo "added backup for $BACKUPNAME to the que on position $INTPROCID" | tee -a $MASTERLOG
	run | tee -a $MASTERLOG &
}
 
# if "rotate" is given as first argument, simply run a rotation in the current working directory with default values
if [ "$1" == "rotate" ]; then
	rotate 30 12 "`pwd`"
	exit;
fi
 
# if "report" is given as first argument, generate a report out of the master log file that was passed as second argument and exit
if [ "$1" == "report" ]; then
	if [ ! -f "$2"  ]; then
		echo "log file not found. please provide the full path of the log file as second argument"
		exit 1
	fi
	report $2
	exit
fi
 
DSTDIR=`date +%Y.%m.%d-%H%M` # always start with `date +%Y.%m.%d... as this is needed for rotation to work later on! 
 
MASTERLOG="/tmp/`date +%Y.%m.%d-%H%M`.log"
REPORT_RECIPIENTS="root" # separate multiple recipiens with space
REPORT_SUBJECT="Backup Report for `hostname`"
 
#check if this script is not still running in an old backup
SELF=`basename "$0"`
 
if [ `ps aux | grep $SELF | grep -v '/bin/sh' | grep -vc grep` -gt 2 ]; then 
	echo "another backup is still running, let it finish first" | tee -a $MASTERLOG
	echo "`ps aux | grep $SELF | grep -v '/bin/sh' | grep -v grep` " | tee -a $MASTERLOG
	exit 1;
fi
 
echo -n " " > /dev/shm/backup_finished
INTPROCID=0
PARALLELPROCS=8					# how many processes (rsync jobs) should be started in parallel? it makes only sense to set this variable once
LOCKDIR=/var/lock/backup			# directory to keep the lock files which are used to prevent parallel execution of backups on the same host
 
##############################################################
### Backup Job Definitions start here  #######################
##############################################################
 
BACKUPNAME="myself"				# this name will be used in status reports, log files and in the backup path, this does not need to be the hostname to connect to!
SOURCE="localhost:/ localhost:/data"    	# source paths (space separated if multiple paths are to be backed up)
BASEDST="/backup"                   	    	# base backup dir
KEEPC=30                                        # number of successful consecutive backups to keep
KEEPM=12					# number of monthly backups to keep starting after the oldest consecutive backup
OPTIONS=""					# additional rsync options like for example "-e /usr/bin/rsh"
start
 
 
BACKUPNAME="remote.server.ch"
SOURCE="root@remote.server.ch:/ root@remote.server.ch:/boot/efi root@remote.server.ch:/data"            # source paths (space separated if multiple paths are to be backed up)
BASEDST="/remoteBackups/${BACKUPNAME}"          # base backup dir
KEEPC=30                                        # number of successful consecutive backups to keep
KEEPM=12					# number of monthly backups to keep starting after the oldest consecutive backup
OPTIONS=''					# additional rsync options like for example "-e /usr/bin/rsh"
start
 
##############################################################
### Backup Job Definitions end here  #########################
##############################################################
 
# wait for all sub processes to finish before the main process can expire, this allows proper killing of all backups
children=`ps aux | grep "$SELF" | grep -v '/bin/sh' | grep -vc "grep"`
while [ $children -gt 2 ]; do 
	sleep 1
	hosts=`lsof ${LOCKDIR}/* 2>/dev/null | grep -v flock | grep backup | awk -F / '{print $NF}' | sort | uniq | tr "\n" " "`
	echo "still have $children processes, currently backing up $hosts"
	children=`ps aux | grep "$SELF"  | grep -v '/bin/sh' | grep -vc "grep"`
done
echo "creating backup Report" | tee -a $MASTERLOG
report $MASTERLOG > /tmp/backupReport.txt
cat /tmp/backupReport.txt | mail -s "$SUBJECT: $REPORT_SUBJECT" "$REPORT_RECIPIENTS"
rm -f /tmp/backupReport.txt

run daily

in order to run the backup daily, run crontab -e as user root and enter a new line like this one here: 

00 1 * * * /opt/mobi.sh > /dev/null 2>&1

using the redirects of both stdout and stderr to /dev/null makes sure you don't receive two emails on every backup where one would come through cron. all the necessary info is logged and the summary is emailaed directly without needing cron to send us any info.

Error due to old flock version

when this script is run on an older linux distribution such as CentOS 6.5 for example, the provided version of flock is too old to know the -E option which specifies an exit code in case the lock could not be acquired. in such a situation you can patch the mobi.sh script using this command: 

sed -i 's/-E 66 //' mobi.sh

this will make the script work on those systems. however, since now the exit code of flock is 1 when it can't acquire a lock the error message displayed in such a case might be a bit misleading, as it is the same as displayed in case of a syntax error in the rsync call. so keep that in mind when debugging such cases.

Migration from RUBI

Since i was using rubi before on many systems (private and customer systems) I'll provide a quick migration guide for those who want to migrate from rubi to mobi:

  1. download the above script and save it to /opt/backup/backup.sh
  2. edit the script
    1. adjust the REPORT_RECIPIENTS variable as needed
    2. under the Backup Job Definitions start here write a new block for every backup.
      1. BACKUPNAME can be set as you like. it will be mentioned in the backup report. Usually coming from RUBI this will be set to the same value as SRCHOST was in RUBI
      2. SOURCE needs to list all directories like SRCPART did, but they need to be prepended by the hostname, so SRCPART=/ /boot with SRCHOST=mysrv would be migrated into SOURCE=mysrv:/ mysrv:/boot
      3. BASEDST can be copy/pasted from rubi 1:1
      4. KEEPC could be set to the same value as KEEPD
  3. to go the backup directory for each host and run this command 
    basename $(<lastdst) | tr -d ":" > .lastdst
  4. remove the “:” in the directory name of the last backup that is written in lastdst like so: 
    mv 2018.04.01-00\:09 2018.04.01-0009
  5. cleanup old log files and lastdst file and whatever else there might be laying around in this folder.
  6. remember to come back and delete the old backups when it's time. old RUBI backups won't be rotated using mobi, this needs to be done manually. mobi will only include backups into the rotation for which it finds a log file of a successful backup job.
  • mobi_backup.txt
  • Last modified: 15.03.2022 16:23
  • by Pascal Suter