moved:

This Project is moved to GitLab!

Backer:

This is my personal Backup-System based on Makefiles (This will maybe change in the future). It is highly inspired by rsnapshot. My goals were:

flexible (all changes should be made in sync.mk, but if really neccecary, they can be made in the Makefile itself, too)
consistend (independing of the backup-command behind the scenes, the Make-Commands are the same)
easy (to use and from concept; all the magic is normally done in rsync)
fast&space-saving (Only new and modified files are synced and saved twice; thanks to hardlinking and the rsync-check algorithm)
The backed up device should have no access to delete backups (Backups are pulled by the Backup-Server instead of pushed to the Backup-Server; Thanks to my webhoster [uberspace.de] for giving the tip somewhere on their blog)
If possible, the Backer should only have read-only-access (This was solved by using an rsync-daemon on the devices to backup, configured to allow just read-only Access)

Usage:

The main reason to provide this is to give some hints how I do backups. This isn't meant to be used without modifications.

I copy this repo for every Device I want to backup. Then I copy the folder folder_to_backup to every folder I want to backup (and delete the sample-folder). Now I modify the sync.mk-Command as wanted. Now I can do make in every subdirectory to backup this dir. I can also do make in the upper directory to backup every folder. This can be done by a cronjob.

rsync-Flags (from the example):

-a: archive-Mode ... a lot of options combined
--no-specials --no-devices: Skip device-files and special files
--delete: Delete files from the old Backups if deleted from the backed folder
--numeric-ids: Save nummeric Owner-IDs, even though the matching user doesn't exist on the destination device
--delete-excluded: Delete files on the backup-folder, if they already exist there and are excluded by the exclude-command
-u: TODO
-x: Stay on the same Filesystem; Don't backup mounted sub-solders
--password-file=../.passwordfile: There is the Password-File with the password of the Rsync-Daemon
--stats -h: Display Stats after a sync (how many files changes, how much bandwidth transmitted, ... in human readable units) //TODO: Fake-root

For additional params or explaination in more detail read the rsync-Manpage.

Makefiles:

Why did I use Makefiles?

First of all, I can just execute single functions without having to do additional work
The next reason was that it automatically skips on errors. This is wanted sometimes, but on the other hand I don't want that other times, too.

rsync-Daemon:

The rsync-Daemon was chosen because:

It was possible to provide read-only access to all files
It is faster than rsync over ssh for the lack of encryption (only use in controlled networks!!!)

It also has some downsides:

The files are not encrypted and I am unsure of the quality of the authentification. Only the backer should be allowed to access the files. (The Request-IPs can be restricted but that is no big obstacle if the hacker in controll of the network)
rsync as daemon isn't used as widely as ssh and there are maybe unknown security flaws (although the NSA seems to have ways to get ssh-access, too ;( )

TODO:

support back.{Number}.tar.{xz|bz|gz}
support Special Chars in Makefile
unlock backup on abort
[example]: check for .backupthis-file on destination directory before backup to make sure the connection to the destination works
make output less verbose on success