No Linux server is complete without a backup system. In the Debian repositories there is a powerful backup program called backup-manager.
Please remember that you have created the /var/bm_archives directory in the 4.9. Create the backups directory chapter and you have set the right ownership and permissions for this directory in the 26.7.9. Install the ‘External storage support’ app chapter. Therefore, now you have this directory prepared to be used by Backup Manager.
To install Backup Manager run:
apt-get update
apt-get install backup-manager
During the installation process you will see the following screen, asking you to enter the name of the directory where Backup Manager will store its archives:
We will configure Backup Manager after installation by editing its main configuration file, therefore press Tab two times to select ‘Cancel’, then press Enter to exit this screen.
Next, we’ll create a MariaDB user with proper permissions, so that Backup Manager can use this user instead of root, to make backups of all the important databases.
mysql -u root -p
CREATE USER ‘backupuser’@’localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘backupuser-password’;
GRANT SHOW DATABASES, SELECT, LOCK TABLES ON *.* TO ‘backupuser’@’localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘backupuser-password’;
Replace backupuser-password with a strong password. Write this password, to use it later. Please don’t use special symbols, like ! or # in the password. Otherwise Backup Manager will fail to backup the MariaDB databases because it will issue commands that will contain the password and since some symbols like ! are interpreted by bash, those commands will fail.
Exit MariaDB CLI with the exit command, then make a backup copy of the /etc/backup-manager.conf file:
cp /etc/backup-manager.conf /etc/backup-manager.conf_orig
Edit the /etc/backup-manager.conf file:
nano /etc/backup-manager.conf
Make it look like the following. Pay attention to the lines in blue:
# Backup Manager Configuration File
#
# * This configuration file is divided into sections.
# The ‘global’ section is mandatory, every keys defined in
# this section are inherited in the other sections.
# * There is one section per “backup method”, you have to
# fill the section of the chosen method.
#
##############################################################
##############################################################
# Repository – everything about where archives are
#############################################################
# Where to store the archives
export BM_REPOSITORY_ROOT=”/var/bm_archives”
# Where to place temporary files
export BM_TEMP_DIR=”/tmp”
# For security reasons, the archive repository and the generated
# archives will be readable/writable by a given user/group.
# This is recommended to set this to true.
export BM_REPOSITORY_SECURE=”true”
# The repository will be readable/writable only by a specific
# user:group pair if BM_REPOSITORY_SECURE is set to true.
export BM_REPOSITORY_USER=”www-data”
export BM_REPOSITORY_GROUP=”root”
# You can also choose the permission to set the repository, default
# is 770, pay attention to what you do there!
export BM_REPOSITORY_CHMOD=”700″
##############################################################
# Archives – let’s focus on the precious tarballs…
##############################################################
# Each archive generated will be chmoded for security reasons
# (BM_REPOSITORY_SECURE should be enabled for this).
export BM_ARCHIVE_CHMOD=”600″
# Number of days we have to keep an archive (Time To Live)
export BM_ARCHIVE_TTL=”15″
# Do you want to purge only the top-level directory or all
# directories under BM_REPOSITORY_ROOT?
export BM_REPOSITORY_RECURSIVEPURGE=”false”
# Do you want to replace duplicates by symlinks?
# (archive-DAY is a duplicate of archive-(DAY – 1) if they
# are both the same according to MD5 hashes).
export BM_ARCHIVE_PURGEDUPS=”true”
# Prefix of every archive on that box (default is HOSTNAME)
export BM_ARCHIVE_PREFIX=”$HOSTNAME”
# Should we purge only archives built with $BM_ARCHIVE_PREFIX
export BM_ARCHIVE_STRICTPURGE=”true”
# You may want to nice the commands run for archive-creation
# (Recommanded for desktop users.)
# Choose a nice level from -20 (most favorable scheduling) to 19 (least favorable).
export BM_ARCHIVE_NICE_LEVEL=”10″
# The backup method to use.
# Available methods are:
# – tarball
# – tarball-incremental
# – mysql
# – pgsql
# – svn
# – pipe
# – none
# If you don’t want to use any backup method (you don’t want to
# build archives) then choose “none”
export BM_ARCHIVE_METHOD=”tarball”
##############################################################
# Encryption – because you cannot trust the place your
# archives are
##############################################################
# If you want to encrypt your archives locally, Backup Manager
# can use GPG while building the archive (so the archive is never
# written to the disk without being encrypted.
# Note: this feature is only possible with the following archive types:
# tar, tar.gz, tar.bz2
# Uncomment the following line if you want to enable encryption
# available method: gpg
export BM_ENCRYPTION_METHOD=”false”
# The encryption will be made using a GPG ID
# Examples:
# export BM_ENCRYPTION_RECIPIENT=””
# export BM_ENCRYPTION_RECIPIENT=””
export BM_ENCRYPTION_RECIPIENT=””
##############################################################
# Section “TARBALL”
# – Backup method: tarball
#############################################################
# Archive filename format
# long : host-full-path-to-folder.tar.gz
# short : parentfolder.tar.gz
export BM_TARBALL_NAMEFORMAT=”long”
# Type of archives
# Available types are:
# tar, tar.gz, tar.bz2, tar.lz, dar, zip.
# Make sure to satisfy the appropriate dependencies
# (bzip2, dar, xz, lzma, …).
export BM_TARBALL_FILETYPE=”tar.gz”
# You can choose to build archives remotely over SSH.
# You will then need to fill the BM_UPLOAD_SSH variables
# (BM_UPLOAD_SSH_HOSTS, BM_UPLOAD_SSH_USER, BM_UPLOAD_SSH_KEY).
# If this boolean is set to true, archive will be saved locally (in
# BM_REPOSITORY_ROOT but will be built by the remote host).
# Thus, BM_TARBALL_DIRECTORIES will be used to backup remote directories.
# Those archive will be prefixed with the remote host name.
export BM_TARBALL_OVER_SSH=”false”
# Do you want to dereference the files pointed by symlinks ?
# enter true or false (true can lead to huge archives, be careful).
export BM_TARBALL_DUMPSYMLINKS=”false”
# Targets to backup
# You can use two different variables for defining the targets of
# your backups, either a simple space-separated list (BM_TARBALL_DIRECTORIES)
# or an array (BM_TARBALL_TARGETS[]).
# Use the first one for simple path that doesn’t contain spaces in their name.
# Use the former if you want to specify paths to backups with spaces.
# It’s recommanded to use BM_TARBALL_TARGETS[] though.
# Warning! You *must not* use both variables at the same time.
# NOTE: The Debian package will only update BM_TARBALL_DIRECTORIES
# Paths without spaces in their name:
export BM_TARBALL_DIRECTORIES=”/var/www /var/vmail /var/lib/mysql /etc /srv/scripts”
# If one or more of the targets contain a space, use the array:
# declare -a BM_TARBALL_TARGETS
# BM_TARBALL_TARGETS[0]=”/etc”
# BM_TARBALL_TARGETS[1]=”/boot”
# export BM_TARBALL_TARGETS
# Files to exclude when generating tarballs, you can put absolute
# or relative paths, Bash wildcards are possible.
export BM_TARBALL_BLACKLIST=””
# With the “dar” filetype, you can choose a maximum slice limit.
export BM_TARBALL_SLICESIZE=”1000M”
# Extra options to append to the tarball generation
# (take care to what you do; this will be silently added to the
# command line.)
export BM_TARBALL_EXTRA_OPTIONS=””
##############################################################
# The tarball-incremental method uses the same keys as the
# tarball method, plus two others.
#############################################################
# Which frequency to use for the master tarball?
# possible values: weekly, monthly
export BM_TARBALLINC_MASTERDATETYPE=”weekly”
# Number of the day, in the BM_TARBALLINC_MASTERDATETYPE frequency
# when master tarballs should be made
export BM_TARBALLINC_MASTERDATEVALUE=”1″
# Examples: you want to make master tarballs every friday:
# BM_TARBALLINC_MASTERDATETYPE=”weekly”
# BM_TARBALLINC_MASTERDATEVALUE=”5″
#
# Or every first day of the month:
# BM_TARBALLINC_MASTERDATETYPE=”monthly”
# BM_TARBALLINC_MASTERDATEVALUE=”1″
##############################################################
# Backup method: MYSQL
#############################################################
# This method is dedicated to MySQL databases.
# You should not use the tarball method for backing up database
# directories or you may have corrupted archives.
# Enter here the list of databases to backup.
# Wildcard: __ALL__ (will dump all the databases in one archive)
export BM_MYSQL_DATABASES=”__ALL__”
# The best way to produce MySQL dump is done by using the “–opt” switch
# of mysqldump. This make the dump directly usable with mysql (add the drop table
# statements), lock the tables during the dump and other things.
# This is recommended for full-clean-safe backups, but needs a
# privileged user (for the lock permissions).
export BM_MYSQL_SAFEDUMPS=”true”
# The user who is allowed to read every databases filled in BM_MYSQL_DATABASES
export BM_MYSQL_ADMINLOGIN=”root”
# its password
export BM_MYSQL_ADMINPASS=””
# the host where the database is
export BM_MYSQL_HOST=”localhost”
# the port where MySQL listen to on the host
export BM_MYSQL_PORT=”3306″
# which compression format to use? (gzip or bzip2)
export BM_MYSQL_FILETYPE=”bzip2″
# Extra options to append to mysqldump
# (take care to what you do; this will be silently added to the
# command line.)
export BM_MYSQL_EXTRA_OPTIONS=””
# Make separate backups of each database?
export BM_MYSQL_SEPARATELY=”true”
# Specify DBs to exclude here (separated by space)
export BM_MYSQL_DBEXCLUDE=””
##############################################################
# Backup method: PostgreSQL
#############################################################
# This method is dedicated to PostgreSQL databases.
# You should not use the tarball method for backing up database
# directories or you may have corrupted archives.
# Enter here the list of databases to backup.
# Wildcard: __ALL__ (will dump all the databases in one archive)
export BM_PGSQL_DATABASES=”__ALL__”
# The user who is allowed to read every databases filled in BM_PGSQL_DATABASES
export BM_PGSQL_ADMINLOGIN=”root”
# its password
export BM_PGSQL_ADMINPASS=””
# the host where the database is
export BM_PGSQL_HOST=”localhost”
# the port where PostgreSQL listen to on the host
export BM_PGSQL_PORT=”5432″
# which compression format to use? (gzip or bzip2)
export BM_PGSQL_FILETYPE=”bzip2″
# Extra options to append to pg_dump
# (take care to what you do; this will be silently added to the
# command line.)
export BM_PGSQL_EXTRA_OPTIONS=””
##############################################################
# Backup method: svn
#############################################################
# Absolute paths to the svn repositories to archive
export BM_SVN_REPOSITORIES=””
# You can compress the resulting XML files
# Supported compressor are: bzip2 and gzip
export BM_SVN_COMPRESSWITH=”bzip2″
##############################################################
# Backup method: pipe
#############################################################
# The “pipe” method is a generic way of making archive.
# Its concept is simple, for every kind of archive you want
# to make, you give: a command which will send output on stdout,
# a name, a file type and optionnaly, a compressor.
# Be careful, this feature uses arrays!
declare -a BM_PIPE_COMMAND
declare -a BM_PIPE_NAME
declare -a BM_PIPE_FILETYPE
declare -a BM_PIPE_COMPRESS
# You can virtually implement whatever backup scenario you like
# with this method.
#
# The resulting archives will be named like this:
# $BM_ARCHIVE_PREFIX-$BM_PIPE_NAME.$DATE.$BM_PIPE_FILETYPE
# If you specified a BM_PIPE_COMPRESS option, the resulting filename
# will change as expected (eg, .gz if “gzip”).
#
# Here are a couple of examples for using this method:
# Archive a remote MySQL database through SSH:
# BM_PIPE_COMMAND[0]=”ssh host -c \”mysqldump -ufoo -pbar base\””
# BM_PIPE_NAME[0]=”base”
# BM_PIPE_FILETYPE[0]=”sql”
# BM_PIPE_COMPRESS[0]=”gzip”
# This will make somthing like: localhost-base.20050421.sql.gz
# Archive a specific directory, on a remote server through SSH:
# BM_PIPE_COMMAND[0]=”ssh host -c \”tar -c -z /home/user\””
# BM_PIPE_NAME[0]=”host.home.user”
# BM_PIPE_FILETYPE[0]=”tar.gz”
# BM_PIPE_COMPRESS[0]=””
# This will make somthing like: localhost-host.home.user.20050421.tar.gz
export BM_PIPE_COMMAND
export BM_PIPE_NAME
export BM_PIPE_FILETYPE
export BM_PIPE_COMPRESS
##############################################################
# Section “UPLOAD”
# You can upload archives to remote hosts with different
# methods.
#############################################################
# Which method to use for uploading archives, you can put
# multiple methods here.
# Available methods:
# – scp
# – ssh-gpg
# – ftp
# – rsync
# – s3
# – none
# If you don’t want to use any upload method (you don’t want to
# upload files to remote hosts) then choose “none”
export BM_UPLOAD_METHOD=”none”
# where to upload (global to all methods. Not required to be set for S3)
export BM_UPLOAD_HOSTS=””
# Where to put archives on the remote hosts (global)
export BM_UPLOAD_DESTINATION=””
# Uncomment the ‘export …’ line below to activate the uploaded archives
# database.
# Using the database will avoid extraneous uploads to remote hosts in the
# case of running more than one backup-manager jobs per day (such as when
# you are using different configuration files for different parts of your
# filesystem).
# Note that when you upload to multiple hosts, a single succesfull upload
# will mark the archive as uploaded. Thus upload errors to specific hosts
# will have to be resolved manually.
# You can specify any filename, but it is recommended to keep the database
# inside the archive repository. The variable’s value has been preset to
# that.
#export BM_UPLOADED_ARCHIVES=${BM_REPOSITORY_ROOT}/${BM_ARCHIVE_PREFIX}-uploaded.list
##############################################################
# The SSH method
#############################################################
# the user to use for the SSH connections/transfers
export BM_UPLOAD_SSH_USER=”bmngr”
# The private key to use for opening the connection
export BM_UPLOAD_SSH_KEY=””
# specific ssh hosts
export BM_UPLOAD_SSH_HOSTS=””
# port to use for SSH connections (leave blank for default one)
export BM_UPLOAD_SSH_PORT=””
# destination for ssh uploads (overrides BM_UPLOAD_DESTINATION)
export BM_UPLOAD_SSH_DESTINATION=””
# purge archives on remote hosts before uploading?
export BM_UPLOAD_SSH_PURGE=”true”
# If you set BM_UPLOAD_SSH_PURGE, you can specify a time to live
# for archives uploaded with SSH.
# This can let you use different ttl’s locally and remotely
# By default, BM_ARCHIVE_TTL will be used.
export BM_UPLOAD_SSH_TTL=””
##############################################################
# The SSH-GPG method
# The ssh-gpg method uses the same configuration keys as the
# ssh method, plus one other
#############################################################
# The gpg public key used for encryption, this can be a short
# or long key id, or a descriptive name. See gpg man page for
# all possibilities how to specify a key.
export BM_UPLOAD_SSHGPG_RECIPIENT=””
##############################################################
# The FTP method
#############################################################
# Use FTP secured transfers (FTP over TLS)
# User, password and data will be uploaded encrypted with SSL.
# Passive mode will be automaticaly activated
export BM_UPLOAD_FTP_SECURE=”false”
# Do you want to use FTP passive mode?
# This is mandatory for NATed/firewalled environments
export BM_UPLOAD_FTP_PASSIVE=”true”
# Timeout (in seconds) for FTP transfer
# This setting only has effect when using FTP transfer with
# secure mode disabled (BM_UPLOAD_FTP_SECURE to “false”)
export BM_UPLOAD_FTP_TIMEOUT=”120″
# Test the FTP connection before starting archives upload.
# This will enable BM to try sending a 2MB test file before
# sending any archive
export BM_UPLOAD_FTP_TEST=”false”
# the user to use for the FTP connections/transfers
export BM_UPLOAD_FTP_USER=””
# the FTP user’s password
export BM_UPLOAD_FTP_PASSWORD=””
# FTP specific remote hosts
export BM_UPLOAD_FTP_HOSTS=””
# purge archives on remote hosts before uploading?
export BM_UPLOAD_FTP_PURGE=”true”
# You can specify a time to live for archives uploaded with FTP
# This can let you use different ttl’s locally and remotely
# By default, BM_ARCHIVE_TTL will be used.
export BM_UPLOAD_FTP_TTL=””
# destination for FTP uploads (overrides BM_UPLOAD_DESTINATION)
export BM_UPLOAD_FTP_DESTINATION=””
##############################################################
# The S3 method
#############################################################
# The Amazon S3 method requires that you secure an S3
# account. See http://aws.amazon.com
# The bucket to upload to. This bucket must be dedicated to backup-manager
export BM_UPLOAD_S3_DESTINATION=””
# the S3 access key provided to you
export BM_UPLOAD_S3_ACCESS_KEY=””
# the S3 secret key provided to you
export BM_UPLOAD_S3_SECRET_KEY=””
# purge archives on remote hosts before uploading?
export BM_UPLOAD_S3_PURGE=”false”
# You can specify a time to live for archives uploaded to S3
# This can let you use different ttl’s locally and remotely
# By default, BM_ARCHIVE_TTL will be used.
export BM_UPLOAD_S3_TTL=””
##############################################################
# The RSYNC method
#############################################################
# Which directories should be backuped with rsync
export BM_UPLOAD_RSYNC_DIRECTORIES=””
# Destination for rsync uploads (overrides BM_UPLOAD_DESTINATION)
export BM_UPLOAD_RSYNC_DESTINATION=””
# The list of remote hosts, if you want to enable the upload
# system, just put some remote hosts here (fqdn or IPs)
# Leave it empty if you want to use the hosts that are defined in
# BM_UPLOAD_HOSTS
export BM_UPLOAD_RSYNC_HOSTS=””
# Do you want to dereference the files pointed by symlinks?
# enter true or false (true can lead to huge archives, be careful).
export BM_UPLOAD_RSYNC_DUMPSYMLINKS=”false”
# Files/folders to exclude when rsyncing. Warning: rsync will interpret
# it as a mask, so will exclude any file/folder corresponding to it
export BM_UPLOAD_RSYNC_BLACKLIST=””
# Extra options to append to rsync
# (take care to what you do; this will be silently added to the
# command line.)
export BM_UPLOAD_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTIONS=””
# Do you want to limit the maximum available bandwidth rsync
# can use ?
# By default, no bandwidth limit is applied.
# Example: 32M, 1024K, …
export BM_UPLOAD_RSYNC_BANDWIDTH_LIMIT=””
##############################################################
# Section “BURNING”
# – Automatic CDR/CDRW/DVDR burning
#############################################################
# the method of burning archives from the list :
# – DVD : burn archives on a DVD medium
# (that doesn’t need formatting, like DVD+RW).
#
# – DVD-RW : blank the DVD medium and burn archives
# (recommanded for DVD-RW media).
#
# – CDRW : blank the CDRW and burn the whole
# ARCHIVES_REPOSITORY or only
# the generated archives.
#
# – CDR : burn the whole ARCHIVES_REPOSITORY or
# only the generated archives.
# – none : disable the burning system
#
# Note that if backup-manager is run from interactive prompt you
# will be asked to insert disc(s) when needed
export BM_BURNING_METHOD=”none”
# When the CD is burnt, it is possible to check every file’s
# MD5 checksum to see if the CD is not corrupted.
export BM_BURNING_CHKMD5=”false”
# The device to use for mounting the cdrom
export BM_BURNING_DEVICE=””
# You can force cdrecord to use a specific device
# Fill in the full path to the device to use or even
# e.g. BM_BURNING_DEVFORCED=”/dev/cdrom”
# If none specified, the default cdrecord device will be used.
export BM_BURNING_DEVFORCED=””
# By default backup-manager will make Joliet media (using the mkisofs switches
# : “-R -J”). You can change these if you want to use non-Joliet disc images.
# Change this only if you know what you’re doing. Refer to mkisofs(8) for
# details.
export BM_BURNING_ISO_FLAGS=”-R -J”
# enter here the max size of your media
# (usal sizes are 4200 for DVD media and 700 or 800 for CDR media)
export BM_BURNING_MAXSIZE=””
##############################################################
# Advanced settings, use this with care.
#############################################################
# Every output made can be sent to syslog
# set this to “true” or “false”
export BM_LOGGER=”true”
# Which level of messages do you want to log to syslog?
# possible values are : debug,info,warning,error
export BM_LOGGER_LEVEL=”warning”
# You can choose which facility to use
export BM_LOGGER_FACILITY=”user”
# Enter here some shell script.
# It will be executed before the first action of backup-manager.
export BM_PRE_BACKUP_COMMAND=””
# Enter here some shell script.
# It will be executed after the last action of backup-manager.
export BM_POST_BACKUP_COMMAND=””
With the settings from above we’ve configured Backup Manger to archive the directories containig the most important data (/var/www /var/vmail /var/lib/mysql /etc /srv/scripts) and to keep all the archives for 15 days.
Please note that the archiving method configured in the following line:
export BM_ARCHIVE_METHOD=”tarball”
is tarball, and not tarball-incremental. This means that when Backup Manager runs, it archives all the directories and files listed in the export BM_TARBALL_DIRECTORIES directive. If the method had been tarball-incremental, Backup Manager would have archived with a specific frequency all the directories and files to create the master tarball archives, and between two master tarball archives, it would have archived only the directories and files that would have changed since the last run. The advantage of the incremental method is that it uses less space but the disadvantage is that the data of a directory can be scattered among different partial archives. That is why we’ve chosen the tarball method.
Note that Backup Manager can also archive MariaDB databases but we’ve configured it to archive only some important directories. The explanation for this is that we’ll have to set up a cron job to run Backup Manager periodically. Before doing that, we have to consider what would be the best frequency for backing up all the important data on the server. For all the important directories and files, once per week is in general frequent enough. In this way, if any file or directory becomes infected/corrupted, we can replace it with a healthy version of it, the newest version being between 1 and 7 days old. But what if the newest version of a website’s database is 7 days old and we want a more recent version of if, because a lot of data has been added to the database in the past few days, and we don’t want to loose it by rebuilding the website from a 7 days old database ? For this situation we’ll create a second configuration file that will allow Backup Manager to back up all the MariaDB databases once per day, so that we can always have a backup copy of any database, no older than 24 hours.
To create the second configuration file run:
cd /etc
cp backup-manager.conf backup-manager-mariadb.conf
Then edit the backup-manager-mariadb.conf file:
nano backup-manager-mariadb.conf
Leave everything unchanged, except for the following directives that should look like below:
export BM_ARCHIVE_TTL=”8″
export BM_ARCHIVE_METHOD=”mysql”
export BM_MYSQL_DATABASES=”example.com secondsite.net thirdsite.info fourthsite.org fifthsite.us bannedipsdb dolibarr friendica mail matomodb mybb mysql nextcloud phplistdb phpmyadmin redscarfpanel roundcubemail roundpindb”
export BM_MYSQL_SAFEDUMPS=”true”
export BM_MYSQL_ADMINLOGIN=”backupuser”
export BM_MYSQL_ADMINPASS=”backupuser-password”
export BM_MYSQL_HOST=”localhost”
export BM_MYSQL_PORT=”3306″
export BM_MYSQL_SEPARATELY=”true”
Replace example.com secondsite.net thirdsite.info fourthsite.org fifthsite.us with the databases of all the websites that you host on the server.
bannedipsdb dolibarr friendica mail matomodb mybb mysql nextcloud phplistdb phpmyadmin redscarfpanel roundcubemail roundpindb are the databases of all the installed applications that you want to save (you can see their names listed on the left panel of phpMyAdmin; if you named your databases differently than specified in this guide, remember to enter their correct name here, to allow Backup Manager to archive them; also, if you didn’t install some of the applications described in this guide, remember to remove their databases from the list from above; otherwise, Backup Manager will try to find those databases and since they don’t exist, it will exit, failing to archive the rest of the databases). backupuser is the user that you set up earlier to be used by Backup Manager for backing up databases and backupuser–password is his password.
Next, change ownership and permissions for the two configuration files:
cd /etc
chown root:root backup-manager.conf backup-manager-mariadb.conf
chmod 600 backup-manager.conf backup-manager-mariadb.conf
Then set up cron jobs in order to run backup-manager once a week, on Friday morning, to archive the important directories, and once a day, to archive the MariaDB databases:
crontab -e
Enter the following lines at the bottom of this file:
# Run Backup Manager every Friday at 4:07 a.m. to archive directories and every day at 3:07 a.m. to archive MariaDB databases
7 4 * * 5 /usr/sbin/backup-manager -c /etc/backup-manager.conf > /dev/null 2>&1
7 3 * * * /usr/sbin/backup-manager -c /etc/backup-manager-mariadb.conf > /dev/null 2>&1
Please note that the owner for the archives created by Backup Manager is www-data. This is done in order to be able to view in Nextcloud all the archives stored by Backup Manager in the /var/bm_archives directory. For this directory to be mounted in Nextcloud, it needs to be owned by www-data. However, the permissions set for this directory and all the archives inside it are quite restrictive (700 for /var/bm_archives and 600 for archive files).
You can also run backup-manager manually if you want to, using the command:
/usr/sbin/backup-manager
If you want to run the command in verbose mode, so that you can see what the application is doing and be able to debug possible problems, run:
/usr/sbin/backup-manager -v
Once you have all the important directories and databases archived and saved in the /var/bm_archives directory, you can download all the archives once a week (on Friday evening for example) using Nextcloud, since the /var/bm_archives directory will be mounted in Nextcloud, according to the settings presented in the chapter Install Nextcloud.
It is recommended to download all the archives from Nextcloud into a local directory on your laptop/desktop. It’s also recommended to keep another copy of all the backups on an external hard drive or similar storage device placed in a secure location. Remember that backups contain very sensitive information like configuration files, database passwords, etc.
If you keep many old backups on your laptop/desktop or on local storage devices, you can reduce the number of days to keep archives in the /var/bm_archives directory, configured in the export BM_ARCHIVE_TTL parameter. In this way, the archives in /var/bm_archives will be fewer, they will take less valuable storage space, and in case anything goes wrong, you can rebuild the websites and applications by using either the more recent archives on the server, or the older archives that you have saved on your laptop/desktop or on local storage devices.
32.1. Upgrading Backup Manager
Since Backup Manager has been installed from the official Debian repository, to upgrade it, all you need to do is to run apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade with a specific frequency, as described in the Maintenance steps chapter. This command will upgrade Backup Manager if there is a new version available. Also, during these upgrades, the configuration changes implemented as described above, will be preserved.
