Comments on: FreeBSD Full / Incremental Filesystem Dump Shell Script

By: Ville Walveranta

Ville Walveranta — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 08:21:33 +0000

You could create a cronjob that copies the resulting dump file to another system after the dump completes. Or, dump over SSH could be integrated to the script. Here’re some notes about dump over SSH I have that might be useful:

push dump of /usr:


dump -0Luanf - /usr | bzip2 | ssh root@targetsystem dd of=/bak/dumps/usrdump_20100309.bz2


dump -0Luanf - /usr | gzip | ssh root@targetsystem dd of=/bak/dumps/usrdump_20100309.gz

To pull:


ssh backupuser@sourcesystem /sbin/dump -0uanLf - /usr | bzip2 | dd of=/bak/dumps/usrdump_20100309.bz2

And to restore..


bzcat usrdump_20100309.bz2 | restore -i -f -

By: carnivora

carnivora — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 07:50:14 +0000

hi Ville,

any idea do you have an idea how can i add script to scp this dump to another server?

Thanks

By: Ville Walveranta

Ville Walveranta — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 09:28:27 +0000

You're welcome! I found a post by Jerry McAllister to be very enlightening regarding restoring dumps. His post is specifically about reducing a partition size, but because the only way to shrink a partition is to make a dump of it and then restore it (to a smaller partition), he outlines the process very well.

By: carnivora

carnivora — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 07:44:01 +0000

Hi,

i already use this script and it works!
thanks for the great script.

but how can i restore from the dump? any idea?

thanks.

By: Ville Walveranta

Ville Walveranta — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 05:24:05 +0000

The tarball is now available for download (see then note above the displayed script).

I also clarified few points in the script’s documentation.

By: Ville Walveranta

Ville Walveranta — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 02:39:59 +0000

Hello,

Indeed, the actual code should read:

eval "local fspath=[backslash]$${fsname}path"
In other words, there should be a backslash in front of the first dollar sign. The WordPress code display script wasn’t displaying it correctly; I’ve fixed it now. Thanks for pointing it out!

Later today I’ll post the script in a tarball to make sure nothing is modified by the blog code display.

By: James K.

James K. — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 01:32:05 +0000

Hi,
Thanks for the nice script – however, I’m keep getting an error “local: 0: bad variable name”. It seems your script is having difficult time evaluating “fspath” from eval “local fspath=$${fsname}path”. Any idea?

Thanks.

By: Ville Walveranta

Ville Walveranta — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 06:43:50 +0000

I have posted yet another update of the script that streamlines the code further. It introduces a configuration variable to select between the start of week either on Sunday or Monday.

Further changes have been made to logging, and processes such as attempting to compress the dump file or cull the old dump files are now not executed if the dump itself does not succeed.

I also realized that dump command allows maximum of nine incremental updates. For that reason it is not meaningful to allow infinite runs of the program. Now, instead, the program allows one dump – level 0 or an incremental dump – to be created per day.

I’m now satisfied with the script myself, and unless I discover bugs in it, 1.5 is likely the final version.

By: Ville Walveranta

Ville Walveranta — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 21:19:56 +0000

I have posted an update of the script that fixes one rather significant bug: level 0 dump would not be created at the start of the week (it would, however, have been created on first “incremental” date).

The only functional correction was to remove one extra space (ECMA languages stick hard..) from “local dumplevel = 0″ to “local dumplevel=0″. I also made various logging enhancements. The most recent version of the script has been posted.

By: Ville Walveranta

Ville Walveranta — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 05:27:27 +0000

Note that this is a Bourne shell script as indicated by the first line of the script even though the WordPress highlights it as “bash”.