Linux System Administration

Backing Up User Data to a Server with rsync

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Restoring Lost or Damaged Files

No backup system is any good if lost files cannot be restored. Not only must we

must be ready in case disaster strikes, but we must also test our recovery and restora-

tion plans to make sure they will work when they are most needed.

Our restoration script is just slightly more complicated than the previous script.

We’ve added a way to specify individual files to be restored:

#!/bin/bash

dest=server1

user=$(whoami)

cd || exit 1

for file in "$@" ; do

rsync -aHPvz "${user}@${dest}:./${file}" "./${file}"

done

To restore files, we simply run the script, passing the names of the files to be restored

as arguments on the command line. In the following example, we will intentionally

remove one of our files and then watch it be restored:

amy@desk12:~$ rm sales-plan-2006-10.sxw

amy@desk12:~$ ./backrestore sales-plan-2006-10.sxw

Password:

receiving file list ...

1 file to consider

sales-plan-2006-10.sxw

41285 100% 6.56MB/s 0:00:00 (1, 100.0% of 1)

sent 42 bytes received 39299 bytes 6052.46 bytes/sec

total size is 41285 speedup is 1.05

amy@desk12:~$

We can also restore all the files at once by using a dot as the filename.

Automated Backups

Backups can be automated using scripts similar to these run as cron jobs (discussed

in Chapter 10). SSH requires the user’s password to be entered, so you’ll need to

include your users’ public keys in