Backup System

Backup System is a live Linux to automatically create incremental backups.

After booting the backup system you are asked whether you want to create a backup. If you confirm this, you are prompted for the passwords of all LUKS encrypted partitions involved in the backup process. Then the backup is created and the computer shuts down when it completed the backup process. All backup options are configured using a configuration file. See the Configuration section for details.

Idea

Locally installed backup solutions have the downside that your choice of operating system partially determines your choice of backup program. Thus, if you use multiple operating systems, you will have to use many different programs to create backups. The idea of this backup system is to create an operating system and system state independent backup solution. This is achieved by using a live Linux which creates the backup.

Apart from booting the backup system the backup process is completely automated. This means you only have to confirm that you want to create a backup and enter the passwords for LUKS encrypted devices. All other aspects of the backup process are controlled by a configuration file.

Building Instructions

For building the backup live linux, the debian package linux-live is used. For documentation see their web site. You probably will have to search for it. The last time I looked it was located at

https://live-team.pages.debian.net/live-manual/

This building instruction was tested on a Debian Buster machine.

Prerequisites

You need the following software for installation:

• live-build
• make

Alternatively, you can use a docker image to build Backup System. In that case, you will need

• docker
• make

Building an ISO image

Make sure to setup the configuration correctly. See the Configuration section for details. Then you can build the image by running the following command

make iso

Between subsequent builds, the command make clean should be ran to clean up the previous build. If you want to clean all automatically generated files, run make clean-all.

Building using Docker

To build Backup System using Docker, you can prefix the make targets from above with the prefix builder-. For example, if you want to create the ISO image version you can run make builder-iso.

To build the docker image which is used for building Backup System you can run make builder. If the docker image is non existent when running any of the build commands using docker, the image is automatically created. To keep track on the build status of the docker image, the (empty) state file builder is created. Its presence indicates that the docker image has been built. Thus, if you need to rebuild the docker image, delete the file builder in the project root folder.

You can run the docker image interactively by running make run.

Note: Sometimes the build using docker fails. It can help to just try again without changing anything.

Creating a bootable USB drive

If you have trouble creating the bootable USB-drive, take a look at Will Haley's Debian live Linux building instructions. These instructions are build on his blog entry.

Configuration

Backup Configuration

The backup configuration is stored in the XML-file backup.xml located in the root directory of the live medium. If you are using the ISO export, you should copy the backup.xml file to the folder config/includes.binary prior to a build. This deploys the file into the root directory of the generated ISO image.

Keyboard Configuration

The keyboard configuration can be altered in two different ways. If the backup system is a bootable USB drive, you can edit the boot prompt inside the Syslinux boot files. If you use a burned version of the generated ISO image, you have to edit the boot prompt using the file auto/config. In there edit the keyboard options --boot-append-live. See The Debian Live Manual for details on how to specify your desired keyboard layout.

The default keyboard configuration is a German keyboard layout.