e.g.

lockfile /home/rsnapshotuser/rsnapshot.pid

command=”/root/backupscript” ssh-rsa AAAAB…..

should be added to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys instead of ~/.ssh/config. Anyone interested in using this method should also look into the PermitRootLogin forced-commands-only option in sshd_config.

sudo rsnapshot hourly

Now whenever I run the:

rsnapshot hourly

command to test, I keep getting this error:

ERROR: Could not write lockfile +"/var/run/rsnapshot.pid"

There is no file by this name and I cannot find any online resource to fix this issue. So it seems there is a serious weakness in this – Meaning if the connection gets broken, they the system also breaks?

Sorry, I’d appreciate anyone who knows how to fix this. :)

THANK YOU!

rsnapshot hourly

I still have to enter the root password on the remote server (WHM/cPanel).

I checked and the remote server does have my public key and it is also authorized.

Where in the local script can I try to force rsnapshot/rsync to use the ssh key? Maybe that’s the issue?

I really hope someone can help thanks.

After manually logging in the rsnapshot does work, so the only sticking point (for me) is to get the automated ssh key login to be used.

Thanks for any help!

Furthermore, i want to be able to mount an external tape drive to the back up server, so to store to tape the back up media.

Thanks.

So the problem occured when I had noauto, like this:

/dev/sdc1 /media/usb_backup auto rw,user,noauto 0 0

Can that bee true, that the disk whasnt mounted at al becourse of that (trying to learn al about linux)?

Thanks for your help!

Are you sure your usb hard disk mounted at /media/usb_backup? Use df or mount command to verify the same. df will also give out information about used disk space.

/dev/sdc1 /media/usb_backup auto rw,user,auto 0 0

I get an error that the disk is full when I do my second backup. It looks like rsnapshot thinks that the catalog where the partion is mounted is the messure of who big the backup can bee.The usb drive is 250 Gb and my main partion where I mount it is (root) is 39Gb.

How do I solve this?

Good suggestion. I’m adding additional content to this FAQ including your exclude_file and mysql backup issue.

In rsnapshot.conf I have “exclude_file /var/backups/snapshot/excludefile.txt”

Then my script does a
find /home/user1/ -xdev -name .nobackup -print0 | xargs -0 -n1 dirname > $EXCLUDEFILE
cat /home/user1/.backupexcludes >> $EXCLUDEFILE

So this first uses the hdup style .nobackup flag files to ignore whole directories. This works pretty well, except for directories that get deleted like firefox cache directories. Those I put in the .backupexcludes file.

I do a similiar thing for the remote servers I backup.

Then “/root/backupscript” can be setup like this:
# allow rsnapshot to backup /etc
if [ "$SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND" = "rsync --server --sender -logDtprRx --numeric-ids . /etc" ]
then
eval $SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND
exit 0
fi
echo no match $SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND >> /root/backupnomatch.log

#If the rsync server sends a slightly different command, modify backed on what is in /root/backupnomatch.log