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| 6 | <title>Box Backup verify and restore files</title> |
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| 13 | <img src="images/bblogo.png" alt="logo" height="65" width="331" border="0" vspace="5" align="middle" /> <img src="images/stepahead.png" alt="a step ahead in data security" width="182" height="11" hspace="10" vspace="20" border="0" align="middle" /></div> |
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| 15 | <div id="page"> |
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| 16 | |
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| 17 | <h1>Box Backup verify and restore files</h1> |
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| 18 | |
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| 19 | <p>Backups are no use unless you can restore them. The <tt>bbackupquery</tt> utility does |
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| 20 | this and more.</p> |
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| 21 | |
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| 22 | <p>You don't provide any login information to it, as it just picks up the data it needs |
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| 23 | from <tt>/etc/box/bbackupd.conf</tt>. You should run it as root so it can find everything |
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| 24 | it needs.</p> |
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| 25 | |
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| 26 | <p>Full documentation can be found in <tt>bin/bbackupquery/documentation.txt</tt> in the distribution |
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| 27 | archive. It follows the model of a command line sftp client quite closely.</p> |
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| 28 | |
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| 29 | <p>On systems where GNU readline is available (by default) it uses that for command line history and |
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| 30 | editing. Otherwise it falls back to very basic UNIX text entry.</p> |
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| 31 | |
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| 32 | |
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| 33 | <h2>Verify backups</h2> |
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| 34 | |
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| 35 | <p>Since this is a development system, you'll be keen to verify that your backups are |
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| 36 | correct. This is easy.</p> |
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| 37 | |
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| 38 | <pre> |
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| 39 | /usr/local/bin/bbackupquery "compare -a" quit |
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| 40 | </pre> |
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| 41 | |
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| 42 | <p>It will report all the differences between the store and the files on disc. It will download |
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| 43 | everything, so may take a while. You should expect to see some differences on a typical compare, |
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| 44 | because files which have recently changed are unlikely to have been uploaded yet. Consider checking the |
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| 45 | timestamps on the files, or keeping a record of these messages and comparing them with a future verification.</p> |
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| 46 | |
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| 47 | <p>If you would like to do a "quick" check which just downloads file |
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| 48 | checksums and compares against that, then do</p> |
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| 49 | |
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| 50 | <pre> |
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| 51 | /usr/local/bin/bbackupquery "compare -aq" quit |
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| 52 | </pre> |
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| 53 | |
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| 54 | <p>However, this does not check that the file attributes are correct, and since the checksums are generated |
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| 55 | on the client they may not reflect the data on the server if there is a problem -- the server cannot check |
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| 56 | the encrypted contents. View this as a good indication, rather than a definite check that your backup |
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| 57 | verifies correctly.</p> |
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| 58 | |
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| 59 | <p>You may wish to run either one as a cron job while testing this system.</p> |
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| 60 | |
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| 61 | |
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| 62 | <h2>Restore backups</h2> |
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| 63 | |
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| 64 | <p>You will need the keys file created when you configured the server. Without it, <b>you cannot |
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| 65 | restore the files</b>; this is the downside of encrypted backups. However, by keeping the small |
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| 66 | keys file safe, you indirectly keep your entire backup safe.</p> |
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| 67 | |
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| 68 | <p>The first step is to recreate the configuration of the backup client. It's probably best |
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| 69 | to have stored the /etc/box directory with your keys. But if you're recreating it, all you really |
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| 70 | need is to have got the login infomation correct (ie the certs and keys).</p> |
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| 71 | |
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| 72 | <p><b>Don't run bbackupd yet!</b> It will mark all your files as deleted if you do, which is not |
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| 73 | hugely bad in terms of losing data, just a major inconvenience. (This assumes that |
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| 74 | you are working from a blank slate. If you want to restore some files to a different location, |
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| 75 | it's fine to restore while bbackupd is running, just do it outside a backed up directory to make |
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| 76 | sure it doesn't start uploading the restored files.)</p> |
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| 77 | |
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| 78 | <p>Type <tt>/usr/local/bin/bbackupquery</tt> to run it in interactive mode.</p> |
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| 79 | |
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| 80 | <p>Type <tt>list</tt> to see a list of the locations stored on the server.</p> |
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| 81 | |
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| 82 | <p>For each location you want to restore, type <tt>restore name-on-server local-dir-name</tt>. The |
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| 83 | directory specified by local-dir-name must not exist yet.</p> |
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| 84 | |
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| 85 | <p>If the restore is interrupted for any reason, repeat the above steps, but add the <tt>-r</tt> |
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| 86 | flag to the restore command to tell it to resume.</p> |
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| 87 | |
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| 88 | |
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| 89 | <h2>Other tricks</h2> |
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| 90 | |
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| 91 | <p>bbackupquery can also... |
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| 92 | <ul> |
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| 93 | <li>List files on the server |
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| 94 | <li>Restore arbitary parts of the file system |
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| 95 | <li><a href="retrieve.html">Recover deleted files</a> (either if the backup daemon hasn't deleted them from the store, |
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| 96 | or if they are marked on the store as deleted but not actually gone yet.) |
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| 97 | <li><a href="retrieve.html">Recover old versions</a> of files which are still on the server. |
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| 98 | </ul> |
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| 99 | </p> |
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| 100 | |
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| 101 | <p>Read <tt>bin/bbackupquery/documentation.txt</tt> for more details.</p> |
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| 102 | |
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| 103 | <p> </p> |
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| 104 | <p>© Ben Summers, 2003, 2004</p> |
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| 105 | <p> </p> |
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| 106 | </div> |
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| 107 | </div> |
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| 108 | </body> |
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| 109 | </html> |
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