- How do I check my backups ?
The following is taken from http://www.boxbackup.org/restore.html
Backups are no use unless you can restore them. The bbackupquery utility does
this and more.
You don't provide any login information to it, as it just picks up the data it needs
from /etc/{your dir}/bbackupd.conf. You should run it as root so it can find everything
it needs.
It follows the model of a command line sftp client quite closely.
On systems where GNU readline is available (by default) it uses that for command line history and
editing. Otherwise it falls back to very basic UNIX text entry.
Verify backups
/usr/local/bin/bbackupquery "compare -a" quit
It will report all the differences between the store and the files on disc. It will download
everything, so may take a while. You should expect to see some differences on a typical compare,
because files which have recently changed are unlikely to have been uploaded yet. Consider checking the
timestamps on the files, or keeping a record of these messages and comparing them with a future verification.
If you would like to do a "quick" check which just downloads file
checksums and compares against that, then do
/usr/local/bin/bbackupquery "compare -aq" quit
However, this does not check that the file attributes are correct, and since the checksums are generated
on the client they may not reflect the data on the server if there is a problem -- the server cannot check
the encrypted contents. View this as a good indication, rather than a definite check that your backup
verifies correctly.
You may wish to run either one as a cron job while testing this system.
- How do I restore my backups if my machine dies ?
Some detail taken from http://www.boxbackup.org/restore.html
You will need the keys file created when you ran the ./run file on your machine. Without it, you cannot
restore the files; this is the downside of encrypted backups. However, by keeping the small
keys file safe, you indirectly keep your entire backup safe.
The first step is to recreate the configuration of the backup client. It's probably best
to have stored the .{accountno}run file we created for you if not you will need to contact us to recreate the credentials for you. You will then need to copy the {acountno}FileEncKeys.raw to the newly created directory.
Don't run bbackupd yet! It will mark all your files as deleted if you do, which is not
hugely bad in terms of losing data, just a major inconvenience. (This assumes that
you are working from a blank slate. If you want to restore some files to a different location,
it's fine to restore while bbackupd is running, just do it outside a backed up directory to make
sure it doesn't start uploading the restored files.)
Type /usr/local/bin/bbackupquery to run it in interactive mode.
Type list to see a list of the locations stored on the server.
For each location you want to restore, type restore name-on-server local-dir-name. The
directory specified by local-dir-name must not exist yet.
If the restore is interrupted for any reason, repeat the above steps, but add the -r
flag to the restore command to tell it to resume.
- How do I retrieve deleted and old files using the command line ?
The following is taken from http://www.boxbackup.org/retrieve.html
Box Backup makes old versions of files and files you have deleted available, subject to there
being enough disc space on the server to hold them.
This is how to retrieve them using bbackupquery. Future versions will make this far
more user-friendly.
Firstly, run bbackupquery in interactive mode. It behaves in a similar manner to
a command line sftp client.
/usr/local/bin/bbackupquery
Then navigate to the directory containing the file you want, using list, cd
and pwd.
query > cd home/profiles/USERNAME
List the directory, using the "o" option to list the files available without filtering out
everything apart from the current version. (if you want to see deleted files as well, use
list -odt)
query > list -ot
00000078 f--o- 2004-01-21T20:17:48 NTUSER.DAT
00000079 f--o- 2004-01-21T20:17:48 ntuser.dat.LOG
0000007a f--o- 2004-01-21T17:55:12 ntuser.ini
0000007b f---- 2004-01-12T15:32:00 ntuser.pol
0000007c -d--- 1970-01-01T00:00:00 Templates
00000089 -d--- 1970-01-01T00:00:00 Start Menu
000000a0 -d--- 1970-01-01T00:00:00 SendTo
000000a6 -d--- 1970-01-01T00:00:00 Recent
00000151 -d--- 1970-01-01T00:00:00 PrintHood
00000152 -d--- 1970-01-01T00:00:00 NetHood
00000156 -d--- 1970-01-01T00:00:00 My Documents
0000018d -d--- 1970-01-01T00:00:00 Favorites
00000215 -d--- 1970-01-01T00:00:00 Desktop
00000219 -d--- 1970-01-01T00:00:00 Cookies
0000048b -d--- 1970-01-01T00:00:00 Application Data
000005da -d--- 1970-01-01T00:00:00 UserData
0000437e f--o- 2004-01-24T02:45:43 NTUSER.DAT
0000437f f--o- 2004-01-24T02:45:43 ntuser.dat.LOG
00004380 f--o- 2004-01-23T17:01:29 ntuser.ini
00004446 f--o- 2004-01-24T02:45:43 NTUSER.DAT
00004447 f--o- 2004-01-24T02:45:43 ntuser.dat.LOG
000045f4 f---- 2004-01-26T15:54:16 NTUSER.DAT
000045f5 f---- 2004-01-26T15:54:16 ntuser.dat.LOG
000045f6 f---- 2004-01-26T16:54:31 ntuser.ini
(this is a listing from a server which is used as a Samba server for a network of
Windows clients.)
You now need to fetch the file using it's ID, rather than it's name. The ID is the
hex number in the first column. Fetch it like this:
query > get -i 0000437e NTUSER.DAT
Object ID 0000437e fetched successfully.
The object is now available on your local machine. You can use lcd to move
around, and sh ls to list directories on your local machine.
