Using the Webmin->System->Filesystembackup utility, I would like to create a backup every night and send it to a Windows based server that is running Cygwin.
Here is the config:
backup directory: /var/www/html host: windowsserver.domain.com user: Administrator device: /cygdrive/g/Backups/%m_%B_%d_%Y.tar command: ssh pasword: xxxxxx
Backup Options: label: wwwhtml compression: no symlinks: no prompt for new tape: no ignore read errors: yes path to rmt: /lib/rmt.exe attempt test restore: no split across files: no limit to 1 filesystem: no add just new files to archive: no remount with noatime: no
schedule: every day at 1am
If I select backup now the only output i get is:
Performing backup of /var/www/html to windowsserver.domain.com:/cygdrive/g/Backups/%m_%B_%d_%Y.tar ..
Administrator@windowsserver.domain.com's password:
Then no more....
If I enter incorrect details i.e. location of rmt.exe then errors do occur. When the backup now button is clicked i can see a new sshd process and rmt process appear on the windows server.
The folder size i am currently trying to backup is 1.9MB. I wanted to try something small before setting a full system backup.
Please could someone advise how I can get more debug information or suggest how I go about getting the backup to work successfully? I have tested that backups can function to another linux box
Alternatively is there another way I could backup my server? - I do not want to use the create backup and then ftp it elsewhere as that would require a large amount of free hdd space on my webmin server.
Many thanks
Mark
Well, if you're primarily looking to backup your Virtual Server data -- you could create a backup in Virtualmin's "Backup and Restore". There's an option in there to copy each backup to the destination server before moving onto the next Virtual Server -- that would keep it from using up too much space.
As far as why you're having trouble though, that's hard to say... can you log into SSH on your cygwin system from your Virtualmin box, and get a shell?
-Eric
Hi Eric,
Ultimately I would like to backup the entire system instead of just the Virtual Servers.
I can log into my windows box via ssh from my virtualmin server just fine. The windows user is currently set to use the /bin/bash shell.
SSH is the main way I administer my windows server as it means i don't need to have remote desktop ports (or anything else) opened through the firewall.
Thanks
Mark
My only suggestion for figuring out what's going on would be to review the logs on your Cygwin system to see if you can get any error output from it.
If not, I'm not really sure what's going wrong there...
My only suggestion I think would be to perform your backup another way -- perhaps creating an shell script that performs an rsync.
Then, you can rsync your entire server to your Cygwin system. That's something you can test from the command line, and you can also automate it by adding it to cron.
Note though that with the filesystem backup, or with rsync, it won't properly back up your databases -- databases have to be dumped first using a tool such as mysqldump. A benefit of using Virtualmin's backup and restore is that it does that mysqldump for you, so databases would be backed up correctly.
-Eric
Hi Eric,
Thank you for your reply. Could you point my in the direction of the source files that perform the backup operation? - I'll then reverse engineer it until I find the problem.
That is a good point about the databases. I will look into that aswell.
If all fails, then a cron shell script will be the way to go, but I am keen to find the problem with the built in tool. At least this way, if I find something, i'll be able to contribute something back to the project!
Thanks Mark