When crashplan is too expensive, you rewrite shell scripts

Installing

apt based installs

• sudo apt install git make rsync ssh rsyslog
• git clone https://github.com/supaplextor/rsyncplan.git
• cd rsyncplan
• make clean init release
• sudo make gnu-install or # make bsd-install

Note: make release-all builds cross-compiled release tarballs for all supported platforms and is not needed for a single-machine install. The install targets (gnu-install, bsd-install) always rebuild the binaries natively for the current host architecture before installing, so you do not need to run release-all first.

MacOS

FreeBSD installs

Fedora

OpenSUSE

Sample Invocation

# rsyncplan rsyncplan-plus201.rollback.cloud

# rsyncplan --label home --filesystem=/home/ rsyncplan-plus201.rollback.cloud

Defaults:

• --label=rootfs
• --filesystem=/

It will fire off one ssh connection and close to grab most recent directory list. Next it will call rsync. You're advised to setup a ssh config entry for the remote root shell. This allows passwordless login via ssh keys.

rsync --link-dest= strategy

We collect a ls -1d and parse present directories as --link-dest= args

Target server directory structure

• /backups
• /backups/machine-name/label/YYYY-MM-DD_HHMMSS_NS

Server side (say the above with sshd, rsync) can use hardlinks with recent yyyy-mm-dd attempts to keep disk space use lower between different snapshots.

"failed verification -- update discarded" errors

rsync performs an end-to-end checksum verification after transferring each file. If a source file changes while rsync is reading and sending it (for example, a compiler or build system regenerates files in an *_autogen/ directory concurrently with the backup), the checksums will not match and rsync reports:

ERROR: path/to/file failed verification -- update discarded.

rsync then exits with code 23 (partial transfer due to error) or 24 (partial transfer due to vanished source files). These are non-fatal: the affected files will simply be backed up correctly on the next rsync run once they are no longer changing. rsyncplan treats exit codes 23 and 24 as warnings and continues normally.