rsbackup

A script to simplify complete system backups

1 key features

• uses tar to create backup archives
• archive gets compressed with zstd
• on smt machines, uses all of your physical cpus for compression
• configurable via environment variables
• directories of your choice can be excluded from backup
• respects extended file attributes and acls

2 installation

2.1 prepare

Clone this repository:
git clone https://git.tuxomat.eu/automat/rsbackup.git

2.2 install

2.2.1 arch users

• cd rsbackup
• makepkg -sic

2.2.2 *buntu users

• cd rsbackup/ubuntu
• ./install_xbuntu.sh

2.2.3 users of other distros

• cd rsbackup
• sudo install rsbackup /usr/local/bin
• verify that zstd, tar and zenity are installed

2.3 configure

rsbackup is configured via environment variables. The variables along with their default values can be seen in rc.skel. If a variable isn't set, rsbackp uses the default value.

Make shure the variables are set with your preferred values, e.g. via ~/.bashrc or ~/.bashrc.local

The variables and their meanings are (defaults in square brackets):

• MOUNTDIR: The base directory where your backup medium is mounted on [/media]
• MOUNTNAME: The name of the directory your backup medium is mounted on $MOUNTDIR [backup]. The complete path to your backup medium is "$MOUNTIDR/$MOUNTNAME"
• BASEDIR: The root directory where your backup will start
• BACKUPDIRS: A string containing space seperated directories that will be backuped.
  Use relative paths, e.g. '. ./boot ./media/myprojects'
  Note that rsbackup will not cross file system boundaries (option --one-file-system to tar)
• EXCLUDEFILE: Directories containing a file with this name will be backed up, but not their contents (only $EXCLUDEFILE is saved)[.no_backup]. This way you can exclude cache directories and the like from your backups.
• TAROPTS: You probably never change this. Ensures, that extended attributes and acls are saved, too [-S --acls --xattrs --exclude=./sys].

3 usage

For a complete system backup, just give rsbackup.

If an optional paramter is passed, that will be the name of a single directory to backup.

4 restoring

Let's say you have a new hard disk where you want to restore your backup to. If this disk is mounted at /mnt/mynewdrive, give

cd /mnt/mynewdrive
sudo tar xf --xattrs-include='*' --acls /path/to/backup.tar.zst