Backup solution for a Debian system with command line 22.03.23

How to back up a Debian system using Backupninja

Last updated on September 19, 2020 by Gabriel Cánepa

Prudence or experience by disaster can teach every sysadmin the importance of taking frequent system backups. You can do so by writing good old shell scripts, or using one (or more) of the many backup tools available for the job (e.g., Clonezilla, Duplicity). Thus the more tools you become acquainted with, the better informed decisions you will make when implementing a backup solution.

In this article we will present Backupninja, a lightweight and easy-to-configure system backup tool. With the help of programs like rdiff-backup, duplicity, mysqlhotcopy and mysqldump, Backupninja offers common backup features such as remote, secure and incremental file system backups, encrypted backup, and MySQL/MariaDB database backup. You can selectively enable status email reports, and can back up general hardware and system information as well. One key strength of Backupninja is a built-in console-based wizard (called ninjahelper) that allows you to easily create configuration files for various backup scenarios.

The downside, so to speak, is that Backupninja requires other helper programs to be installed in order to take full advantage of all its features. While Backupninja's RPM package is available for Red Hat-based distributions, Backupninja's dependencies are optimized for Debian and its derivatives. Thus it is not recommended to try Backupninja for Red Hat based systems.

In this tutorial, we will cover the Backupninja installation for Debian-based distributions.
Installing Backupninja

Run the following command as root:

# aptitude install backupninja

During installation, several files and directories will be created:

/usr/sbin/backupninja is the main bash shell script.
    /etc/cron.d/backupninja, by default, instructs cron to run the main script once per hour.
    /etc/logrotate.d/backupninja rotates the logs created by the program.
    /etc/backup.d/ is the directory where the configuration files for backup actions reside.
    /etc/backupninja.conf is the main configuration file that includes general options. It is well commented and explains each option in detail.
    /usr/share/backupninja is the directory where the scripts used by Backupninja are located (aka handlers). These are the scripts which are in charge of doing the actual work. In this directory you will also find .helper files, which are used to configure and set up ninjahelper menus.
    /usr/share/doc/backupninja/examples contains templates for action configuration files (the kind of files that are created through ninjahelper).

Running ninjahelper for the First Time

https://www.xmodulo.com/backup-debian-system-backupninja.html

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Backup solution for a Debian system with command line 22.03.23

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