NAME
backup-reporter - handles several types of backup jobs, and produces a
uniform report for each job.
SCRIPT CATEGORIES
UNIX/System_administration
SYNOPSIS
`backup-reporter [ -delms ] [-t device] [-r recipients] config_file
[...]'
`backup-reporter -lms apollo.conf'
`backup-reporter -ms hermes.conf'
`backup-reporter -d apollo.conf'
Note: you must use a config file to specifiy what stuff you want to back
up.
README
This is a general script for many types of backup jobs. You can use it
to configure different types of backups, which can run together or
independently of each other. It also formats a nice report for each
backup job.
Complete documentation is available in the script itself, in the
embedded POD.
DESCRIPTION
This is a general script for many types of backup jobs. You can use it
to make complete system backups, backup a few directory trees, or just
backup a few files. You can also do all of these jobs at once. A backup
job can target just one host, or several hosts at once. You can use it
with ufsdump, dump, tar or pax, whichever works best for your system.
You can save your archives to tape or just save them to the local
filesystem (the script will organize your archive files by hostname).
The main motivation for writing this script was to manage a variety of
different backup jobs for different systems, with each job having a
consistent and informative output format. By using config files, I could
easily modify the targets of the backup jobs without having to modify
the script itself, and conversely, I could easily modify the script
itself and have it immediately apply to all backup jobs.
You specify a backup job by using a config file. The config file syntax
is a little clumsy, however, sample config files have been placed into
the archive for this script on CPAN, so you can probably just modify
them to suit your purposes. This archive is kept in the author's
directory on CPAN, namely CPAN/authors/id/JNOLAN.
To see what a config file will do, run the script against it using the
debugging option -d, and you will see a list of the commands which would
be run (they won't be run, just listed).
C<backup-reporter -dl hermes.conf>
C<backup-reporter -d hermes.conf>
What this script actually does is construct shell commands on the fly,
based on whatever data you have in your config file and configured
directly in this script. These shell commands will be calls to ssh, scp,
tar, ufsdump, gzip, etc. (You will need to edit this script in order to
configure paths to these binaries).
If you use the -m option, then the script takes the text of each command
it generated along with its output, formats it nicely into a mail
message, and mails it to you at the end of each backup job. It sends
special mail messages based on the exit status of the commands it
launches.
This script expects to be able to ssh and scp to remote hosts as some
user which has enough priveleges to read the target files. You will need
to set this up on your own. The example config files are set up to open
ssh connections as the user root on the remote hosts.
Instructions for downloading, installing and setting up ssh are availabe
at
http://www.ssh.fi (
http://www.ssh.fi/sshprotocols2/index.html) or
http://www.datafellows.com/f-secure.
If you like this script and end up using it, please let me know. If you
run into problems or errors, I will try to give you a hand with it
and/or post bugfixes and improvements back out onto CPAN. Please email
me at
[email protected].
PREREQUISITES
This script requires `MIME::Entity', which requires the `MailTools'
bundle, which itself requires `MIME::Base64'. (If I remember
correctly... they're all nifty modules, just install all of them.)
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (c) 1998,1999 John Nolan <
[email protected]>. All rights
reserved. This program is free software. You may modify and/or
distribute it under the same terms as Perl itself. This copyright notice
must remain attached to the file.
WARRANTY
This script comes with absolutely no warranty.
REVISION
$Id: backup-reporter,v 1.9 1999/12/24 06:21:16 john Exp john $
