> Hi there, > > On Tue, 19 Nov 2024, Divan Santana wrote: > >> ... >> Yeah, I found that hit via search engines. I don't find that >> website very good. That article is very out of date, apache is not >> in ports on OpenBSD, perhaps because they have their own webserver. >> >> I tried that method, but alas there is no apache in OpenBSD. I guess I >> could try compile it. > > It shouldn't be too difficult to do that if you have a recent compiler > but now I'm looking at articles like > > https://www.cambus.net/the-state-of-toolchains-in-openbsd/ > > I begin to wonder if OpenBSD isn't a headache you don't need for your > backup system. I do understand there are arguments in favour of it, > but to run BackupPC I think you really do need to be able to build > fairly recent software which can be problematic for older compilers.
I really like OpenBSD as a platform. But yeah, it seems nginx is in the repos so I could perhaps get the web interface to work with that. OpenBSD ports has backuppc has 3.3.2p3 and it seems to work and be easy to install etc. I know it's not the latest version, but 3.x was always good enough for me. I don't mind waiting another year or whatever, to get 4.x. OpenBSD is a really easy system to maintain and stable, which is what I'm after. >> There is backuppc directly in OpenBSD ports. It seems to work, but >> I have no idea how to setup the web front end and without it, I have no >> idea how to manage backuppc. > > I have never used the Web interface for setting up BackupPC. In fact > I'm not even sure that I'd know how to do it that way! One thing I've > heard when people use the Web interface for configuration is that all > the comments in the original configuration file get deleted, so using > 'diff' to see what's changed from the original won't be very helpful. > Presumably that's still the case but I don't know for sure, maybe one > of the other readers will be able to say. > > I really only use the Web interface for daily monitoring the state of > my backups. Basically I keep the page > > http://piplus.local.jubileegroup.co.uk/BackupPC_Admin?action=summary > > open in a tab permanently, and I refresh it daily just to check that > all the machines are still being backed up. Very occasionally one of > the remotes will lose its VPN route or something like that. But it's > possible to get more or less the same functionality by running a cron > job to look at the per-machine files. > > .... > > You can easily get BackupPC going, just by editing files; in a pinch > you can check that backups are happening by looking at the log files > in /var/lib/BackupPC/pc/*/; and you can even recover backups if you > use BackupPC executables such as BackupPC_tarCreate. You would not > have the convenience, visibility and flexibility which is offered by > the Web interface, that's all. Well I suppose that's quite a lot. :( > > The files you'd need to edit are in the configuration directory, most > likely that's /etc/BackupPC/. The files are 'config.pl' and 'hosts'. > The system will operate with very few changes. Some candidate values > for change in 'config.pl' are > > 8<---------------------------------------------------------------------- > $Conf{FullKeepCnt} > $Conf{FullKeepCntMin} > $Conf{FullAgeMax} > > and a few others I won't mention here to do with scheduling which you > probably won't need to touch to begin with. > > You need to set > > $Conf{XferMethod} > > for your preference, and e.g. if you use rsyncd also > > $Conf{RsyncdUserName} > $Conf{RsyncdPasswd} > > If you have remote machines with longish RTTs then maybe adjust > > $Conf{PingMaxMsec} > > If you want email alerts > > $Conf{EMailAdminUserName} > $Conf{EMailUserDestDomain} > > To keep more up to date I set > > $Conf{EMailNotifyOldBackupDays} = 1; > > because the default was 7 (at least it was years ago) and I don't like > to think that I might not hear of a failed backup for more than a week. > 8<---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > The changes to 'hosts' are very simple, here are the first couple of > lines added at the bottom of my copy 'hosts'. > > alpha 0 backuppc > beta 0 backuppc > > (Somebody here likes Greek names for their machines...:) > > The names need to be resolvable in your local DNS. Read the extensive > comments in the two files for more information. > > You can tailor the backup characteristics for individual machines by > creating files called 'machinename.pl' in /etc/BackupPC/pc/ which > contain fragments of the configuration to override the configuration > in /etc/BackupPC - but you don't have to do that. I tend to use that > feature to limit what gets backed up in e.g. workstation machines, so > that I'm not backing up gigabytes of browser caches and similar junk. > > A Raspberry Pi can make a cheap backup system. I've used one for a > few years. You can run Debian on them now and everything you need > should be packaged. Maybe easier than struggling with OpenBSD/VMs? Thanks for all the info and options/suggestions Ged! I really wish I explained myself better. So I do always configure the system using config files, editing the pl files (not in the web). I guess I only used the web interface to visualise the health of everything. To see the stats and browse the files and restore backups etc. I guess I could do this from CLI, which is pretty cool. Maybe I'll have to learn that. But I would like to try get the web interface working too. I'll see if I can get it going and perhaps post some info on how it's going. _______________________________________________ BackupPC-users mailing list BackupPC-users@lists.sourceforge.net List: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users Wiki: https://github.com/backuppc/backuppc/wiki Project: https://backuppc.github.io/backuppc/
