Proxmox-backup

This script was written as a part of a Programming & Scripting class. The script takes a backup of the backup files created by Proxmox, ie take all the backup files (vzdump-openvz-111-2013_11_19-08_20_20.tar.lzo and so on) and copy them to a tape device and an external harddrive.

Short introduction on usage

At the top of the script there are several variables which you need to set to match your system. The most important ones are BackupDir which is where your Proxmox server places it's backup files. On my system this is /mnt/backup/dump (note: no trailing slash should be entered in the variables). Then we have TapeDev which is your Tape device. Most tape devices show up as st0, st1, st2 and so on (st = SCSI Tape). Next is the ExtHDD variable which you should set to your external HDD if you want to backup to an external harddrive. After this you set MntPoint which is where you would like to mount your external harddive. Next variable is ExtHDDdir which you set to where you would like your backup-files on your external harddrive. A very important variable is Where. Here you'll define if you would place your backup on your tape device or an external harddrive, or both. If you set Where to Tape only a tape backup will be performed. If you set it to HDD the backup files will only to copied to your external harddrive. If you set it to Tape&HDD your backup files will be placed on both an external harddrive and on your tape device.

You can place your script wherever you on your system. When the script runs it will cd into your Proxmox backups files and perform it's action from there.

All error messages are printed to STDERR and all normal messages are printed to STDOUT. Because of this you can run this script headless and save the output in separate logfiles depending on whatever it's an error or normal messages. For example you can run it like this:

./serverbackup.sh > backupmessages.log 2> backuperrors.log

Taperotate

This is just a small complementary script to serverbackup.sh. The script keep track on which tape you last used for your backup so you'll know which tape to use next. Either you can run the script by itself or include it on the same line as serverbackup such as ./serverbackup.sh && ./taperotate.sh. Each time taperotate is run a new line is printed in the tapefile.txt file which contains the tape used. The next time the script is run it automatically increases the tape number by one.

The first time you run taperotate.sh you'll have to initialize it with the -i N option where N is the tape you start with. If you change the order of the tapes later on you can use the -i option again to start over with tape N (the old lines will be kept though to keep track on the old backups).

Flowchart, specs and notes

You can ignore these files as they are just a part of the inital lab/exercise for the class and for my own memory.

Dummyfiles

These are some dummy backup files to test the script on. They have the same format as the real Proxmox created files.