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aneuryzm
Asked: 2011-01-09 05:47:44 +0800 CST

What does snapshot_root do?

  • 772

I want to use rsnapshot for remote backups of my websites.

It is not clear this line in rsnapshot.conf:

snapshot_root   /.snapshots/

In the documentation, it says snapshots are stored in this directory, but I actually want them to be stored on a remote server and this is specified later with the line 

backup local_folder remote_server

so what's snapshot_root then ?

rsnapshot

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    snapshot_root is the root for the paths you specify under backup.

    For example:

    snapshot_root  /var/backups/me/
...
backup /home/me/movies/ /media/
backup /home/me/music/  /media/
backup /home/me/drafts/ /documents/

    After running rsnapshot hourly, for example, the snapshots would be stored under

    /var/backups/me/hourly.0/media
/var/backups/me/hourly.0/documents

    The snapshot target must be a local filesystem (although the source can be remote).

    I think the simplest option is to put the rsnapshot service on the remote server, and let it copy from your webserver. Using ssh, it would look something like

    snapshot_root  /var/backups/me/
...
backup [email protected]:/home/me/movies/ /media/

    You would need to have the ssh daemon running on the "example.com" box, and configured so that the user (here "me") can ssh into "example.com" without being asked for a password.

    See the rsnapshot HOWTO (section 4.3.8 Backup) for more details.

    • 5

  2. I had the same issue... and discovered that if I locally mount a folder from the remote system, then rsnapshot will allow me to set the "snapshot_root" configuration parameter to point to it.

    This then allows me to store my snapshots and my backup on the same remote server.

    eg.

    Mount a folder from the remote system

    mount 192.168.0.2:/volume1/Backup /mnt/Backup

    Set the "snapshot_root" configuration parameter to point the mounted folder

    snapshot_root /mnt/Backup/rsnapshot/

    Set a rsnapshot backup point to backup a local folder remotely

    backup /home/backup-source [email protected]:/volume1/Backup/backup-target/ rsync_short_args=-trvsz

    Note: Although I could have simply designated the mounted remote folder instead as a backup destination, (see below), this would not have enabled me to utilise the Rsync server running on the remote target, (in this case a Synology NAS). I used shared keys to allow rsnapshot to access the remote backup target without a password

    backup /home/backup-source /mnt/Backup/backup-target/ rsync_short_args=-trvsz

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