docker-backuppc

Synopsis

A simple docker container for running Backuppc at the latest version (3.3.1).

Description

Backuppc is an unattended backup solution for individuals who need to manage multiple machine backups for the 2 "F" (Friends and Family), and for organizations that do not want to spend large amounts of money and a lot of effort on backup management tasks.
I've leveraged a couple of exiting container projects (see attributions below).

• BackupPC project Home

If you have a current installation of backuppc with custom of configuration and backed up data you would want to be able to migrate to the docker deployment of the backuppc without an interruption of your backup schedule. I build this container with specifically this in mind. The Migration section below will address the migration of the existing backuppc installation to run in this container.

Gory Details

• This container installs BackupPC from Ubuntu Xenial sources.
  • On startup it checks if the provided volumes for data and configuration are
    empty and if yes, move the default configuration from packaging into it
• Several configuration values like the expected container time zone
  have been placed into the overrides.sh look at the Customization section below
• Support for sending status mail using msmtp
  • the image ip address of eth0 will be used for host line in the msmtprc
    if a different behavior is desired replace the value for the LOCAL_ADDR in
    the overrides.sh

Default settings

• No authentication
• SSH host key checking disabled
• If the data volume is empty, a new SSH key pair gets generated at startup
• The time zone is set to Americas/New_York
• the msmtp host is set to the eth0 ip address
• the mail domain name is set to 'default.com'
• the backuppc user password is set to 'password'

Volumes

• /var/lib/backuppc: Persistent data for backuppc, including ssh key
• /etc/backuppc: Configuration for backuppc

Ports

• 80: Web interface for BackupPC

How to use

Customization

• change backuppc htaccess password in the overrides.sh
  the line reads export BACKUPPC_PASSWORD=password
  replace the password with an actual password you want to use
• change local time zone (if needed) in the overrides.sh
  the line reads export LOCAL_ZONE=America/New_York
• Please modify the default domain in the overrides.sh file
  replace the default.com with a real domain name
  the line reads export DOMAIN_NAME=default.com
• Use either the make or docker instructions below
  Note: build at least once using one of the options below ...

Using make

You can override the default name of the container, $containername
(backuppc) prior to launching the container
for example: containername=BOB; make run

• execute make

  • this will list the available targets and variables that can be overwritten

• execute make kill

  • this will stop a running container

• execute make start

  • this will start a stopped container

• execute make clean

  • this will call kill and clean up the default folders
    • WARNING: do not run this (or any targets that will trigger this) if you overwrote the tmp_configpath and/or tmp_datapath with folders that point to the 'real' configuration and/or data folders.

• execute make build

  • this will call clean and (re)build the container
    (with default, initially empty, backup and config folders)

• execute make run

  • this will call build and launch targets
    (Not safe for 'real' tmp_configpath and/or tmp_datapath)

• execute make launch

  • This will run a container (without rebuilding it)
    The purpose of this is when you want to rebuild a container that's pointing to 'real' folders .
    (this safe for 'real' locations for tmp_configpath and/or tmp_datapath)
    Run make build pointing to the default tmp_configpath and tmp_datapath, then overriding the tmp_configpath and/or tmp_datapath run make launch.
    This will recreate the container but will not wipe out your 'real' directories.

• execute make preserve

  • this make a backup of the default config folders as
    backuppc-$containername.<date time>.tar.gz archive under your id
    • WARNING: expects that make run was executed and not followed with a clean
      or build, kill is OK, it does not delete the default folders
      I would NOT recommend doing this with a multi-terabyte 'real' data folder ...

• execute make enter

  • this will call start, then logs then open a bash shell in the running container

• execute make logs

  • this will show the logs of the running container
    (expects at leastmake run, make launch or make start as a prerequisite)

Using docker

set some variables, for example

DATA=<BackupPC data folder>    
CONF=<BackupPC configuration folder>    
PORT=<the local port, ex 8080>    
CNAME=<container name>    
DOCKERHUB_USER=<your docker hub id>    

then run the commands as follows

sudo docker build -t $DOCKERHUB_USER/backuppc:latest .    
sudo docker run -d -v $DATA:/var/lib/backuppc:z \    
    -v $CONF:/etc/backuppc:z -p $PORT:80 \    
    --name $CNAME $DOCKERHUB_USER/backuppc:latest

Migration

Migration is fairly straight forward.

• build and launch the image as described above.
• use the make preserve target above to backup the default installation folders
  This task will save the default config and the default data folders to the home folder of the user in a tar.gz format
  ex: backuppc-backuppctest.20160410-113538.tar.gz
  this backup was done for the default container name on April 10th 2016
• Shutdown backuppc and make a backup of your configuration and data folders
  (I know it's a pain, since you will need a literal ton of space for the data portion, however if anything goes sideways like it tends to do. you'll be happy you did)
• un-tar (using tar -xvf name ) and compare your /etc/backuppc and your /var/lib/backuppc folders with the defaults. You will need to adjust your config to leverage this installation elements like .ssh and .msmtprc in the data folder.
• stop and start this container pointing to your newly merged configuration and data folders instead of the default temp ones (see instructions for the Using docker above

Notes on this container

This project was created in early 2016 and at this time to get the latest version would require either, building from source or leveraging ubuntu:xenial I've built this project from source before and would prefer leveraging exiting distribution so I've pointed the build to ubuntu:xenial instead of "ubuntu:latest, to be fair if xenial (16.04) will turn out to be not as stable as I would like, I may change my mind again and just build from source. I hope that since xenial will be the next LTS release I will be vindicated in my decision. I will modify the base image for this container once the xenial is switched to latest.

Author and Legal information

Author

Nick Rapoport

Copyright

Copyright© 2016 Nick Rapoport -- All rights reserved (free for duplication under the AGPLv3)

License

AGPLv3

Based On

Projects

• alvaroaleman/docker-backuppc
• ktwe/docker-backuppc

Date

2016-03-28