What's this

Simple-backuper is a simple tool for backuping files and restoring it from backups.

Benefits

Simplicity and transparency. Few lib files and one short script. Most programmers can understand it.
Efficient use of disk space (incremental backup):
- Automatic deduplication of parts of files (most modified files differ only partially).
- All files will be compressed with archivator (compression level may be configured).
- Incremental backup format doesn't require initial data snapshot.
Security:
- All files will be encrypted with AES256 + RSA4096.
- Encryption doing before data send to storage host.
- For backuping you don't need to keep private RSA key accessible to this program. It needs only for restoring.
- Thus, even with the backup data, no one can get the source files from them. And also no one can fake a backup.
You can specify different priorities for any files.
For recover your backup you need only: access to storage host, your crypting keys and some backup options.
You can backup to local directory or to remote sftp server.
Requires on backuper host: perl and some perl libs.
Requires on SFTP storage host: disk space only.

Installing

You can install simple-backuper from CPAN (perl packages repository) or directly from github.

From CPAN

cpan install App::SimpleBackuper

From GitHub

git clone https://github.com/dmitry-novozhilov/simple-backuper.git
cd simple-backuper
perl Makefile.pl
make
sudo make install

Required libraries you can install from your distro package manager: apt install libcrypt-rijndael-perl libcrypt-openssl-rsa-perl libcompress-raw-lzma-perl libdigest-sha-perl libtext-glob-perl libtry-tiny-perl libnet-sftp-foreign-perl libconst-fast-perl libmime-base64-perl libjson-pp-perl

Configuring

You need a configuration file. By default simple-backuper trying to read ~/.simple-backuper/config, but you can use other path. In this case you need specify --cfg option on all simple-backuper run.
This file is json with comments allowed. It can be like this:

{
    "db":                   "~/.simple-backuper/db",        // This database file changes every new backup. ~/.simple-backuper/db - is a default value.
    
    "compression_level":    9,                              // LZMA algorythm supports levels 1 to 9
    
    "public_key":           "~/.simple-backuper/key.pub",   // This key using with "backup" command.
                                                            // For restore-db command you need to use private key of this public key.
                                                            
                                                            // Creating new pair of keys:
                                                            // Private (for restoring): openssl genrsa -out ~/.simple-backuper/key 4096
                                                            // Public (for backuping): openssl rsa -in ~/.simple-backuper/key -pubout > ~/.simple-backuper/key.pub
                                                            // Keep the private key as your most valuable asset. Copy it to a safe place.
                                                            // It is desirable not in the backup storage, otherwise it will make it possible to use the backup data for someone other than you.
    
    "storage":              "/mnt/backups",                 // Use "host:path" or "user@host:path" for remote SFTP storage.
                                                            // All transfered data already encrypted.
                                                            // If you choose SFTP, make sure that this SFTP server works without a password.
                                                            // This can be configured with ~/.ssh/ config and ssh key-based authorization.
    
    "space_limit":          "100G",                         // Maximum of disc space on storage.
                                                            // While this limit has been reached, simple-backuper deletes the oldest and lowest priority file.
                                                            // K means kilobytes, M - megabytes, G - gygabytes, T - terabytes.
    
    "files": {                                              // Files globs with it's priorityes.
        "~":                            5,
        "~/.gnupg":                     50,                 // The higher the priority, the less likely it is to delete these files.
        "~/.bash_history":              0,                  // Zero priority prohibits backup. Use it for exceptions.
        "~/.cache":                     0,
        "~/.local/share/Trash":         0,
        "~/.mozilla/firefox/*/Cache":   0,
        "~/.thumbnails":                0,
    }
}

First (initial) backup

After configuring you need to try backuping to check for it works: simple-backuper backup --backup-name initial --verbose
The initial backup will take a long time. It takes me more than a day.
The next backups will take much less time. Because usually only a small fraction of the files are changed.

Scheduled backups

You can add to crontab next command:

0 0 * * * simple-backuper backup --backup-name `date -Idate`

It creates backup named as date every day.

Logging

Simple backuper is so simple that it does not log itself. You can write logs from STDOUT & STDERR:

0 0 * * * simple-backuper backup --backup-name `date -Idate` 2>&1 >> simple-backuper.log

Recovering

The first thing you need is a database file. If you have it, move to next step. Otherwise you can restore it from your backup storage:
simple-backuper restore-db --storage YOUR_STORAGE --priv-key KEY
YOUR_STORAGE - is your storage option from config. For example my_ssh_backup_host:/path/to/backup/.
KEY - is path to your private key!
Chose backup and files by exploring you storage by commands like simple-backuper info, simple-backuper info /home,..
Try to dry run of restoring files: simple-backuper restore --path CHOSED_PATH --backup-name CHOSED_BACKUP --storage YOUR_STORAGE --destination TARGET_DIR
CHOSED_PATH - is path in backup to restoring files.
CHOSED_BACKUP - is what version of your files must be restored.
YOUR_STORAGE - is your storage option from config. For example my_ssh_backup_host:/path/to/backup/.
TARGET_DIR - is dir for restored files.
If all ok, run restoring files with same command and --write argument!

haarg/simple-backuper