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I want to use rsnapshot to make backups of some folders on a remote server.

I've already setup Key Based Authentication, and I've specified in rsnapshot.conf:

snapshot_root user@server.com/

however I get the following error:

ERROR: snapshot_root snapshot_root user@server.com/ - snapshot_root \ must be a full path

So I was wondering if the only way is to mount first the remote server and how (I'm on Ubuntu 9.04)

thanks

aneuryzm
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1 Answers1

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I think you may be misunderstanding the way that rsnapshot works. Rsnapshot runs on a server system onto which you backup the files from a remote system - it pulls files into the snapshot_root to store them. If you have snapshot_root set to /backups/ then 

backup /home/ localhost/

will backup the local /home directory and it's contents to

/backups/<interval>.<n>/localhost/home

and

backup root@remote.tld:/var/www/ remote.tld

will backup the /var/www/ directory from remote.tld using rsync over ssh to

/backups/<interval>.<n>/remote.tld/var/www

EDIT:

You can run rsnapshot as any user. You will need to copy the /etc/rsnapshot.conf file to somewhere that you can edit it eg ~/rsnapshot/ . You will need to change the lockfile directive as you most likely wont be able to write to write to it's default as a standard user.

lockfile        /home/patrick/rsnapshot/rsnapshot.pid

You then invoke rsnapshot thus

rsnapshot -c /home/patrick/rsnapshot/rsnapshot.conf hourly

Do you have access to cron as a standard user on the server ?

user9517
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    nmhmm... ok. So rsnapshot should be installed on the backup server and not the production server! That's my mistake I guess – aneuryzm Jan 09 '11 at 08:45
  • I've actually just realized that I don't have sudo privilegies on the backup server. Does this mean I cannot use rsnapshot for remote backups ? – aneuryzm Jan 09 '11 at 08:57
  • @Patrick: See my edit for how to use rsnapshot as any user – user9517 Jan 09 '11 at 09:51