rsnapshot

Table of Contents

1. Overview
2. Module Description - What the module does and why it is useful
   • Notes
3. Setup - The basics of getting started with rsnapshot
   • What rsnapshot affects
   • Setup requirements
   • Getting started with rsnapshot
4. Configuration - options and additional functionality
   • Examples
   • More Options
5. Reference - An under-the-hood peek at what the module is doing and how
   • Classes
   • Functions
   • Parameters
   • Rsnapshot Configuration Parameters
6. Limitations - OS compatibility, etc.
7. Development - Guide for contributing to the module
8. Editors
9. Contributors

Overview

The rsnapshot module installs, configures and manages rsnapshot on a dedicated backup server.

Module Description

The rsnapshot module installs, configures and manages rsnapshot on a dedicated backup server. It allows to set up a centralized Backup Server for all your nodes. For the cron setup, the module will pick random time entries for the crons from an Array or a Range of time. For how to configure this, please see below

Notes

This module is best used with an ENC like hiera. It will make your config much easier to read and to maintain. Check the examples to see what I mean.

Setup

What rsnapshot affects

• This module will install the rsnapshot package on your system
• This module will manage the rsnapshot config on your system
• This module will manage cron entries for your configured nodes

Setup Requirements

On CentOS Systems this module requires the stahnma-epel module. Also you will need to have rsync installed on all nodes to be backed up. It will create repeatable random cron entries from a configurable timerange for all hosts.

Getting Started

You will need to pass the nodenames to be backed up at least. This will pickup all defaults and add localhost to the backups:

class { '::rsnapshot':
  hosts => {
    'localhost' => {},
  }
}

Configuration

Here are some more elaborate examples of what you can do with this module.

Examples

This will backup localhost with defaults. It will disable the default backup locations for example.com and just backup '/var' for example.com.

class { '::rsnapshot':
  hosts => {
    'localhost' => {},
    'example.com'    => {
      backup_defaults => false,
      backup          => {
        '/var/'       => './'
      }
    }
  }
}

The same in hiera:

---
classes: rsnapshot
rsnapshot::hosts:
  localhost:
  example.com:
    backup_defaults: false
    backup:
      '/var/': './'

A more complete hiera example:

---
classes: 
  - rsnapshot

# override default backup dirs for all hosts:
rsnapshot::default_backup:
    '/etc':         './'
    '/usr/local':   './'
    '/home':        './'

# configure hosts to be backed up
rsnapshot::hosts:
# pick all defaults for localhost
  localhost:
# add futher backups for node foo.example.com (additional to default_backup) and use a different snapshot root
  foo.example.com:
    backup:
      '/foo':       './'
      '/bar':       './'
      '/baz':       './misc'
    snapshot_root:  '/tmp/rsnapshot'
# all defaults
  foo1.example.com:
  foo2:
# disable default backup dirs and just backup /var for node bar1
# also set the minute to 0-10 for daily cron (note: this is not particularly useful, it's just meant to document the features)
# lastly set the range of hours to pick a random hour from (the cron for bar1 will have hour set to something between 1 and 5)
  bar1:
    backup_defaults: false
    backup:
      '/var': './var'
    cron:
      mailto: 'bar1@example.com'
      daily:
        minute: '0-10'
        hour:   '1..5'
  db1:
    backup_scripts:
      mysql:
      misc:

More options

The defaults are pretty reasonable, I hope. However, you may override pretty much anything. Available parameters are discussed below.

Specials

As mentioned, this module will generate random time entries for your hosts. The random number generator is hashed with hostname and backup_level, so the randomness will be repeatable per host.level. This is important so puppet won't override the crons with each run. You may specify time ranges as follows:

• default cron syntax
• an array with allowed values, for example, if you want the backup for a host to run between 1am and 5am, you would override the hours setting for the host in question. in hiera this would look like: (Explanation see below)

rsnapshot::hosts:
  example.com:
    cron:
      'daily':
        'minute': '1'
        'hour':   '1..5'

This will create the rsnapshot config using defaults from params.pp, but set the minute of the daily backup to '1' and the hour to something random between 1 and 5. So it would look something like:

1 4 * * * foo daily

or maybe

1 2 * * * foo daily

Reference

Classes

Public Classes

• rsnapshot: Main class, includes all other classes.

Private Classes

• rsnapshot::install: Handles the packages.
• rsnapshot::config: Handles configuration and cron files.
• rsnapshot::params: default values.

Functions

assert_empty_hash

Sets an empty value to a hash (we need this so a loop doesn't break if just a hostname is given to pick up all defaults.

pick_undef

Like pick but returns undef values.

rand_from_array

Takes an Integer, a String or an Array as input, and returns a random entry from the array (or just the String/Integer)

Parameters

The following parameters are available in the ::rsnapshot class:

$hosts

Hash containing the hosts to be backed up and optional overrides per host (Default: undef (do nothing when no host given))

$conf_d

The place where the configs will be dropped (Default: /etc/rsnapshot (will be created if it doesn't exist))

$backup_user

The user to run the backup scripts as (Default: root, also the user used for ssh connections, if you change this make sure you have proper key deployed and the user exists in the nodes to be backed up.)

$package_name

(Default: rsnapshot)

$package_ensure

(Default: present)

$cron_dir

Directory to drop the cron files to. Crons will be created per host. (Default: /etc/cron.d)

$backup_levels

Array containing the backup levels (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly) Configure the backup_levels (valid per host and global, so you may either set: rsnapshot::backup_levels for all hosts or override default backup_levels for specific hosts) (Default: [ 'daily', 'weekly', ] )

$backup_defaults

Boolean. Backup default backup dirs or not. (Default: true)

$default_backup

The default backup directories. This will apply to all hosts unless you set backup_defaults = false Default is:

  $default_backup         = {
    '/etc'  => './',
    '/home' => './',
  }

$cron

Hash. Set time ranges for different backup levels. Each item (minute, hour...) allows for cron notation, an array to pick a random time from and a range to pick a random time from. The range notation is '$start..$end', so to pick a random hour from 8 pm to 2 am, you could set the hour of your desired backup level to [ '20..23','0..2' ] For the range feature to work, hours >0 and <10 must not have a preceding zero. Wrong: 00.09 Correct: 0..9 Also, you can set a mailto for each host, or globally now. The settings will be merged bottom to top, so if you override a setting in a hosts cron, it will have precedence over the global setting, which in turn has precedence over the default.

Example:

  $cron = {
    mailto     => 'admin@example.com',
    hourly     => {
      minute   => '0..59',
      hour     => [ '20..23','0..2' ],
    }
  }

Or in hiera:

• global override

rsnapshot::cron:
  mailto: 'admin@example.com'
  daily:
    minute: '20'
  weekly:
    minute: '20'

• per host override

rsnapshot::hosts:
  webserver:
    cron:
      mailto: 'support@example.com'
      daily:
        hour: [ '20..23','0..2' ]
      weekly:
        hour: [ '20..23','0..2' ]
  
  webhost:

  customervm.provider.com:
    backup_user: 'customer'

webhost: Mails will go to admin@example.com (from the global override).

webserver: Mails will go to support@example.com.

customervm.provider.com: The backup (and thus ssh) user will be customer@customervm.provider.com

Hash is of the form:

$cron    =>{
  mailto => param,
  daily => {
    minute => param,
    hour => param,
  }
  weekly => {
    minute => param,
    hour => param,
  }
  {...}
}

Default is:

  $cron = {
    mailto     => 'admin@example.com',
    hourly     => {
      minute   => '0..59',  # random from 0 to 59
      hour     => '*',      # you could also do:   ['21..23','0..4','5'],
      monthday => '*',
      month    => '*',
      weekday  => '*',
    },
    daily      => {
      minute   => '0..10',      # random from 0 to 10
      hour     => '0..23',      # you could also do:   ['21..23','0..4','5'],
      monthday => '*',
      month    => '*',
      weekday  => '*',
    },
    weekly     => {
      minute   => '0..59',
      hour     => '0..23',      # you could also do:   ['21..23','0..4','5'],
      monthday => '*',
      month    => '*',
      weekday  => '0..6',
    },
    monthly    => {
      minute   => '0..59',
      hour     => '0..23',      # you could also do:   ['21..23','0..4','5'],
      monthday => '0..28',
      month    => '*',
      weekday  => '*',
    },
  }

$snapshot_root

global. the directory holding your backups. (Default: /backup) You will end up with a structure like:

/backup/
├── example.com
│   ├── daily.0
│   ├── daily.1
│   ├── daily.2
│   ├── daily.3
│   ├── weekly.0
│   ├── weekly.1
│   ├── weekly.2
│   └── weekly.3
└── localhost
    ├── daily.0
    ├── daily.1
    ├── daily.2
    └── weekly.0

$interval

How many backups of each level to keep. Default is:

  $interval               = {
    'daily'   => '7',
    'weekly'  => '4',
    'monthly' => '6',
  }

$backup_scripts

Additional scripts to create, possible values are: mysql, psql, misc

mysql: used for mysql backups

psql: used for postgresql backups

misc: custom commands to run on the node

You can set

$dbbackup_user: backup user

$dbbackup_password: password for the backup user

$dumper: path to the dump bin you wish to use

$dump_flags: flags for your dump bin

$ignore_dbs: databases to be ignored (the psql script ignores template and postgres databases by default)

$commands: array of commands to run on the host (this has no effect on psql and mysql scripts and is intended for your custom needs, see misc script section)

See below for defaults

NOTE: the psql and mysql scripts will SSH into your host and try and use $dumper. Make sure you have those tools installed on your DB hosts.

Also, this module will try and use pbzip to compress your databases. You can install pbzip2 (and additional packages you might need) by passing an array to $rsnapshot::package_name

Default is:

  $backup_scripts = {
    mysql               => {
      dbbackup_user     => 'root',
      dbbackup_password => '',
      dumper            => 'mysqldump',
      dump_flags        => '--single-transaction --quick --routines --ignore-table=mysql.event',
      ignore_dbs        => [ 'information_schema', 'performance_schema' ],
    },
    psql                => {
      dbbackup_user     => 'postgres',
      dbbackup_password => '',
      dumper            => 'pg_dump',
      dump_flags        => '-Fc',
      ignore_dbs        => [ 'postgres' ],
    },
    misc         => {
      commands   => $::osfamily ? {
        'RedHat' =>  [
          'rpm -qa --qf="%{name}," > packages.txt',
        ],
        'Debian' => [
          'dpkg --get-selections > packages.txt',
        ],
        default => [],
      },
    }
  }

Configuration example:

rsnapshot::backup_scripts:
  mysql:
    dbbackup_user: 'dbbackup'
    dbbackup_password: 'hunter2'
  psql:
    dbbackup_user: 'dbbackup'
    dbbackup_password: 'yeshorsebatterystaple'

rsnapshot::hosts:
  foobar.com:
    backup_scripts:
      mysql:
      psql:
        dumper: '/usr/local/bin/pg_dump'
        dump_flags: '-Fc'
        ignore_dbs: [ 'db1', 'tmp_db' ]
      misc:
  bazqux:de:
    backup_scripts:
      mysql:
        dbbackup_user: 'myuser'
        dbbackup_password: 'mypassword'
      misc:
        commands:
          - 'cat /etc/hostname > hostname.txt'
          - 'date > date.txt'

This creates

• a mysql and a psql backup script for foobar.com using the credentials dbbackup:hunter2 for mysql and dbbackup:yeshorsebatterystaple for psql
• the psql script will use /usr/local/bin/pg_dump as the dump program with flags -Fc
• it will ignore the postgres databases db1 and tmp_db for postgres
• a mysql backup script for bazqux.de using the credentials myuser:mypassword
• a misc script for bazqux.de containing two commands to run on the node. the output will be redirected to hostname.txt and date.txt in the misc/ subfolder of the hosts backup directory (i.e. /snapshot_root/bazqux.de/daily.0/misc/hostname.txt)

The scripts look like this:

bazqux.de

#!/bin/bash
host=bazqux.de
user=myuser
pass=mypassword

dbs=( 
      $(ssh -l root "$host" "mysql -u ${user} -p${pass} -e 'show databases' | sed '1d;/information_schema/d;/performance_schema/d'")  
    )

for db in "${dbs[@]}"; do
  ssh -l root "$host" "mysqldump --user=${user} --password=${pass} --single-transaction --quick --routines --ignore-table=mysql.event ${db}" > "${db}.sql"
  wait
  pbzip2 "$db".sql
done      

#!/bin/bash

ssh bazqux.de 'cat /etc/hostname > hostname.txt'

ssh bazqux.de 'date > date.txt'

foobar.com

psql:

#!/bin/bash
host=foobar.com
user=dbbackup
pass=yeshorsebatterystaple

PGPASSWORD="$pass"
dbs=( 
      $(ssh -l root "$host" "psql -U ${user} -Atc \"SELECT datname FROM pg_database WHERE NOT datistemplate AND datname ~ 'postgres|db1|tmp_db'\"" )
    )

for db in "${dbs[@]}"; do
  ssh -l root "$host" "pg_dump -U ${user} -Fc ${db}" > "$db".sql
  wait
  pbzip2 "$db".sql
done

mysql:

#!/bin/bash
host=foobar.com
user=dbbackup
pass=hunter2

dbs=( 
      $(ssh -l root "$host" "mysql -u ${user} -p${pass} -e 'show databases' | sed '1d;/information_schema/d;/performance_schema/d'")  
    )

for db in "${dbs[@]}"; do
  ssh -l root "$host" "mysqldump --user=${user} --password=${pass} --single-transaction --quick --routines --ignore-table=mysql.event ${db}" > "${db}.sql"
  wait
  pbzip2 "$db".sql
done      

misc (assuming foobar.com is a RedHat node):

#!/bin/bash

ssh foobar.com 'rpm -qa --qf "%{name}," > packages.txt'

another example with root user and empty password

mysql with root user:

#!/bin/bash
host=bazqux.de
user=root
password=

dbs=( 
      $(ssh -l root "$host" "mysql -e 'show databases' | sed '1d;/information_schema/d;/performance_schema/d'")  
    )

for db in "${dbs[@]}"; do
  ssh -l root "$host" "mysqldump --single-transaction --quick --routines --ignore-table=mysql.event ${db}" > "${db}.sql"
  wait
  pbzip2 "$db".sql
done      

rsnapshot configuration variables

Please read up on the following in the rsnapshot manpage

$config_version

Default is: '1.2'

$cmd_cp

Default is: '/bin/cp'

$cmd_rm

Default is: '/bin/rm'

$cmd_rsync

Default is: '/usr/bin/rsync'

$cmd_ssh

Default is: '/usr/bin/ssh'

$cmd_logger

Default is: '/usr/bin/logger'

$cmd_du

Default is: '/usr/bin/du'

$cmd_rsnapshot_diff

Default is: '/usr/bin/rsnapshot-diff'

$cmd_preexec

Default is: undef

$cmd_postexec

Default is: undef

$use_lvm

Default is: undef

$linux_lvm_cmd_lvcreate

Default is: undef # '/sbin/lvcreate'

$linux_lvm_cmd_lvremove

Default is: undef # '/sbin/lvremove'

$linux_lvm_cmd_mount

Default is: undef # '/sbin/mount'

$linux_lvm_cmd_umount

Default is: undef # '/sbin/umount'

$linux_lvm_snapshotsize

Default is: undef # '100M'

$linux_lvm_snapshotname

Default is: undef

$linux_lvm_vgpath

Default is: undef

$linux_lvm_mountpath

Default is: undef

$logpath

Default is: '/var/log/rsnapshot'

$logfile

unused, we are logging to $logpath/$host.log Default is: '/var/log/rsnapshot.log'

$lockpath

Default is: '/var/run/rsnapshot'

$snapshot_root

Default is: '/backup/'

$no_create_root

Boolean: true or false Default is: undef

$verbose

Default is: '2'

$loglevel

Default is: '4'

$stop_on_stale_lockfile

Boolean: true or false Default is: undef

$rsync_short_args

Default is: '-az'

$rsync_long_args

rsync defaults are: --delete --numeric-ids --relative --delete-excluded Default is: undef

$ssh_args

Default is: undef

$du_args

Default is: undef

$one_fs

Default is: undef

$retain

Default is: { }

$include

Default is: []

$exclude

Default is: []

$include_file

Default is: undef

$exclude_file

Other than this might suggest, the default behavior is to create an exclude file per host. Default is: undef

$link_dest

Default is: false

$sync_first

Default is: false

$rsync_numtries

Default is: 1

$use_lazy_deletes

Default is: false

Limitations

Currently, this module support CentOS, Fedora, Ubuntu and Debian.

Development

I have limited access to resources and time, so if you think this module is useful, like it, hate it, want to make it better or want it off the face of the planet, feel free to get in touch with me.

Editors

Norbert Varzariu (loomsen)

Contributors

Please see the list of contributors. A big thank you to Hendrik Horeis hendrik.horeis@gmail.com for all his input and testing of this module.