man hdup.conf (5): the hdup configuration file

DESCRIPTION

The configuration file syntax of hdup is borrowed from SaMBa (which is more commonly known as an ini-style config file). A '#' as the first character on a line is the start of a comment. Blank lines are skipped.

Multiple entries on a line must separated by commas: ",".

Some options can be turned on and off. These are binary options. All binary option default to 'off'. They are turned on by 'yes','on' or 'true' and are turned off with 'no', 'off' or 'false'.

The [global] section is required to be the first section in the configuration files. Options specified under [global] are also used in [host] sections. They can overridden when they are also specified under that [host] statement. This works for all options. Further to this, one [host] statement can inherit from another [host] statement.

Config entries may be given multiple times, in that case the latest one is taken as the final choice.

It is further best described by an example:

#
# backup config for hdup
#
[global]
archive dir = /tmp/storage/
compression = gzip
user = operator
proto = /usr/bin/ssh
proto option = -q -oProtocol=2
overwrite = yes

[host-name-a-conf]
dir = /var/www, /etc/cron.d

[host-name-a-root]
dir = /root/.cpan/Bundle

[host-name-a]
inherit = host-name-a-conf, host-name-a-root
allow remote = yes

[global]

The [global] section is required. The keywords specified under it are used for each host (globally).

All keywords specified under [global] are inherited by the other hosts. Ie. if you specify 'compression = gzip' under global, all hosts who do not redefine 'compression' will use 'gzip'.

[host-name]

This is a host statement. For every host you want to back up there should be a host statement. This is also true when you are restoring an archive.

Host statements can inherit from other host statements. Any keywords initialised for the original host, will append to, or overwrite, the current keywords.

There is a maximum of 255 different hosts in 1 hdup configuration file.

Be aware that archive dir must be specified in the configuration file, dir is only needed when performing backups. When restoring it is not needed.

Keywords

The following keywords are supported: algorithm, allow remote, always backup, archive dir, chunk size, compression,compression level, date spec dir, exclude, force, free, group, gpg, include, inherit, key, log, mcrypt, no history, ,nobackup, one filesystem, overwrite, postrun, prerun, proto, proto option, remote hdup, remote hdup option, skip, sparse, tar, tar option and user,

The only mandatory options are archive dir and dir. They must be present for every host.

algorithm

Optional. What algorithm should hdup use when encrypting an archive. If this is not specified the archive will not be encrypted. Both 'algorithm' and
'key' must be present. For gpg encryption use gpg here.

allow remote

Optional, binary option. If 'on' remote archives are allowed to be uploaded from this host, otherwise they are denied.

always backup

Optional, binary option. When 'on' hdup will always perform a backup. Normally when an incfile is not found the backup is aborted. What this option does is that if the backup scheme is daily and no weekly incfile is found, hdup performs a weekly backup. If hdup discovers no monthly incfile when doing a weekly it performs a monthly dump.

archive dir

Mandatory. Specify what directory hdup should use to store the archives and the (incremental) dump information.

chunk size

Optional. Give the size of the chunks hdup should create when splitting up an archive. Size can be given with the suffix 'k', 'K' or 'm', 'M'. Chunks of the archive get the suffix '__split__XX', where XX is a two letter sequence starting by 'aa' and ending at 'zz'. To split up archive in CD sized chunks, chunk size = 640m could be used.

compression

Optional. Specify the compression hdup should use. This can be bzip, gzip, lzop or none. Defaults to gzip. Some explanation on the difference might be appropiate here. bzip (which uses bzip2) is slow but compresses the best, gzip is faster but offers less compression. lzop is the fastest of them all while offering very good compression. none is of course the fastest.

compression level

Optional. Specify the compression level, it's an integer between 1 and 9 (inclusive), where 1 equals, fast operation, lousy compression and 9 means best compression, but slow. When omitted it defaults to 6.

Defaults to 6, which for all compression algorithms is the standard default.

date spec

Optional. The following formats are supported:
default format will be 'DD-MM-YYYY'
iso format will be 'YYYY-MM-DD'
american format will be 'MM-DD-YYYYY'

dir

Mandatory. Specify which directories or files should be backed up. You can also specify a single file, like /usr/src/linux/.config.

There can be up to 20 different directories specified. There can only be 1 dir statement per host.

exclude

Optional. Specify a list with a regular expressions that should be used to determine which files should not be backed up. See regex(7) for more information about regular expressions. Also see the section PATTERNS.

force

Optional, binary option. When 'on' a restore to / will be allowed.

free

Optional. With free you can specify how much free space must be available on a partition. If this free space requirement is not met, hdup will not perform the backup. Takes an optional size modifier: 'k', 'm' or 'G'.

gpg

Optional. The path to gpg. Defaults to the value of the configure script.

group

Optional. Specify the group under which the archives must be stored. Defaults to whatever group 'user' belongs to.

include

Optional. Specify a list with a regular expressions that should be used to determine which files should be backed up. See regex(7) for more information about regular expressions. Also see the section PATTERNS. Included files take precedence on exclude files.

inherit

Optional. Specify a list of hosts to inherit from. All keywords specified will either overwrite (for single items) or append (for lists) keywords for the current host. This allows creating specific host configurations out of common parts.

key

Optional. Which file should be used as the encryption key. Both 'algorithm' and 'key' must be present. In the case where algorithm is gpg the user ID of the key must be specified here.

log

Optional, binary option. When 'on' hdup will also log to syslog. All message will be logged under LOG_DAEMON with priority LOG_NOTICE. All errors are logged in the following format:
FAILURE, <hostname>, <error condition>

Succes is reported as:
SUCCESS, <hostname>, <archive size>, <archive time>

If the backup is send to a remote system, <archive size> equals "remote". If the operation is restore, then <archive size> equals "restore".

mcrypt

Optional. The path to mcrypt. Defaults to the value of the configure script.

no history

Optional, binary option. When 'on' hdup will store each archive in a directory called 'static' thereby not keeping any history of the archives. WARNING: this option is dangerous to use. When a backup fails and you did not copy the archives to some safe place you are left with no backups at all! A postrun script is provided in the examples directory of the hdup source, which copies the archives to a safe place. It is best to NOT use this option unless you know what you are doing.

Restoring such an archive can be accomplished by using the word 'static' as the restore date.

nobackup

Optional. The argument is a filename. When specified hdup looks for this file in the directories it backs up. If this file is found the current directory and all sub-directories are excluded from the backup.

one filesystem

Optional, binary option. When 'on' hdup will stay in the local file system for each directory specified (with 'dir') when creating a backup.

overwrite

Optional, binary option. When 'on' old archives are overwritten.

postrun

Optional. Specify a command or script that be should run after hdup is finished with the backup. The following variables can be used as arguments:
%h expands to the current host.
%a expands to the full path of the archivename of the current backup.
%s expands to the current scheme.
%u expands to the username under which the archives are stored.
%e expands to 'yes' when encryption is used, 'no' otherwise.
%c expands to 'yes' when chunksize is used, 'no' otherwise.
%g expands to the groupname under which the archives are stored.

Note: If the postrun script executes with errors the backup is not aborted. Note2: Any arguments not defined will be expanded to '-empty', without the quotes.

prerun

Optional. Specify a command or script that should run before hdup begins with the actual backup. The following variables can be used as arguments:
%h expands to the current host.
%a expands to the full path of the archivename of the current backup.
%s expands to the current scheme.
%u expands to the username under which the archives are stored.
%e expands to 'yes' when encryption is used, 'no' otherwise.
%c expands to 'yes' when chunksize is used, 'no' otherwise.
%g expands to the groupname under which the archives are stored.

Note: If the prerun script executes with errors the backup IS aborted. Note2: Any arguments not defined will be expanded to '-empty', without the quotes.

proto

Optional. Specify the path of the program to use when transferring an archive to a remote host. Known to work is ssh. Defaults to the value of the configure script.

These programs must be able to be used as a filter and support the user@remotehost syntax.

Note: Be aware that this value must also be defined in the remote hdup which is receiving the backup, although it is not used there. If you don't want to set it to 'ssh' you can use '/dev/null' or any other path.

proto option

Optional. Specify options that are given to the proto command in hdup. E.g. proto option = -i /home/user/.ssh/identity -oProtocol=2.

remote hdup

Optional. If the @user@remotehost syntax is used this keyword specifies the location of the remote hdup.

remote hdup option

Optional. If the @user@remotehost syntax is used this keyword specifies the options (like the location of the config file) that should be used by the remote hdup.

skip

Optional, binary option. Depricated, it is always 'on'. When 'on' the backup directory is automaticly put in the exclude list and thus not backed up.

sparse

Optional, binary option. Depricated, it is always 'on'. When 'on' hdup will use tar's --sparse feature when backing up files.

tar

Optional. The path to tar. Defaults to the value of the configure script. This tar must support the command line syntax of GNU tar.

tar option

Optional. Specify some extra options to the tar executed by hdup. These options are given the tar and untar commands. No extra checking is done by hdup on these options.

user

Optional. Specify the user under which the archives must be stored. Defaults to operator.

PATTERNS

The include and exclude keywords take regular expression as there input. There is one extra rule. If an expression ends with a slash '/' it is only applied to directories. A '/' in a different place is not handled special.

The whole pathname of a file or directory is used in the pattern matching. The pattern matching is case sensitive.

Examples

To match all files ending with .txt use the pattern .*.txt. To match everything file under opt, use ^/opt. To match a specific directory in /opt, use ^/opt/bla/, note that this excludes all directories which start with this string.

If you want to match a single directory you must supply the full pathname and a leading, and closing '/'.

WHAT COMES FIRST include or exclude

AUTHOR

Written by Miek Gieben. Wouter van Gils helped a lot with testing pre-release versions. User feedback is appreciated.

REPORTING BUGS

Report bugs to <[email protected]> or via the bugzilla at the homepage.