[0m[1;1H[B[1D[1C[1;30m+^^^---^^^---^^^---^^^---^^^---^^^---^^^---^^^--
[A[49C-^^^---^^^---^^^-+[B[67D|[12C[32mM[0;32mystic [1mBBS B[0;32ma
[A[26Cckup - [1mtwo machines setup[16C[30m|[B[68D[1C+...---...---...
[A[17C---...---...---...---...---...---...---...---...-+[B[67D[66C 
[0mHello All,[B[10D[B[1Dthis article is about a way of backing up the M
[A[47Cystic BBS over the net[B[69Din the two machines setup. The possibl
[A[38Ce reason is one machine having[B[68Dfast Internet connection and s
[A[30Cmall disk space and the second more and[B[69Dcheaper disk space.
[B[1DThis article assume You have Mystic BBS installed on Your system. It
can receives connection, files and messages from users. It sends and[B[68D
[Areceive files from FTN networks.[B[32D[B[1DNow it grew a bit and You'
[A[26Cre in the front of the decision on how to[B[67Deffectively backup 
[A[19CYour system.[B[31D[B[1DThere are several approaches. I assume Yo
[A[41Cur BBS runs on Linux. You[B[66Dhave two computers on disposal. The
[A[35C first computer is the BBS node[B[66D(let's call it source node) i
[A[29Cn the place where it receives traffic[B[66Dfrom outer Internet. Th
[A[23Cat could be DMZ or rather server provider's[B[66Dfarm. The other c
[A[17Computer we will call the archive machine (or[B[61Dtarget node).
[B[1DNow what You want to do is to backup Your BBS on regular basis.  And
You want to have the environment where You could do the system changes
without affecting the production BBS. There should be possibility to[B[68D
[Arecover lost or corrupted message bases or recover from other failure.
[B[1DThe one method I came up while thinking about it is as follows:
[B[1D[1;30m1) [32mYou will make a copy of Your system from the source ma
[A[57Cchine[B[62D[30m2) [32mYou will compress and backup the copy on t
[A[45Che target machine[B[62D[30m3) [32mYou will maintain the compress
[A[33Ced copies on target machine[B[60D[B[1D[0mAll this is chosen bec
[A[22Cause this strategy brings the opportunity to[B[66Dboth have full b
[A[16Cackup on target for Your disposal. That means in case[B[69DYou wou
[A[7Cld detect any problem on the source You can switch to the[B[64Dtarg
[A[4Cet machine a bring up the BBS without any struggle. The backup[B[66D
[Acopy on target can be easily recovered to the source machine using the
opposite direction of the sync process.[B[39D[B[1DLet's implement it in 
[A[22Cfollowing steps described below:[B[54D[B[1D1) incrementally tran
[A[21Csfer the BBS from source to target (backup)[B[64Dmachine:[B[8D
[1;32mrsync -razv --delete <source>:/app/bbs /app[B[43D[B[1D[0mThe rsy
[A[7Cnc is available on most Linux distributions by default. It[B[65Dpro
[A[3Cvides functionality to synchronize source and target folders.  The
source and target folders can be on different machines. You can do[B[66Dth
[A[2Cat locally of course in case You have enough space. But I assume
Your disk-space is more expensive on the live BBS than on the archive[B[69D
[Amachine.[B[8D[B[1DThe options used says:[B[22D[32m-r [1m- recursi
[A[12Cve follow all folders to synchronize between source and[B[67D[5Ct
[A[6Carget[B[11D[0;32m-a [1m- archive - this will assure You'll synchr
[A[45Conize file attributes[B[66D[0;32m-z [1m- compress the files duri
[A[28Cng the transfer to save some traffic[B[64D[0;32m-v [1m- verbose 
[A[13C- this option allows the progress of synchronization[B[65D[5Cto b
[A[9Ce written on standard output and thus let us debug the[B[63D[5Cpro
[A[8Ccess. Later on this option can be removed[B[49D[0;32m--delete [1m
[A[9C- this will allow us to synchronize file deletions and thus[B[68D
[A[5Ckeep the BBS target copy in sync with the source[B[53D[B[1D[0m<s
[A[2Cource> is the name for the machine. What rsync uses is the[B[60D~/.
[A[3Cssh/hosts file. In this file You can provide alias for Your source
machine. Example of such configuration can be as follows:[B[57D[B[1D
[A[32mHost [1msource[B[11D[2C[0;32mHostname [1mbbs.example.com
[2C[0;32mUser [1msysop[B[12D[B[1D[0mThis will provide us the opportu
[A[32Cnity to connect to host[B[55Dbbs.example.com under user sysop when
[A[37C command:[B[46D[B[1D[1;32mssh source[B[10D[B[1D[0mis issue
[A[8Cd. There is one more trouble to be solved and that's the[B[64Dauthe
[A[5Cntication process during the connect to remote system. That means
You have to generate ssh keys on the target machine and put it into[B[67Dt
[A[1Che ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the source machine. I would let this up
to You but generally You want to generate dsa private key using[B[63Dssh-k
[A[5Ceygen then extract the public part of the key from the private[B[67D
[Akey and put that string into the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the source
machine.[B[8D[B[1DHint:[B[5D[1;32mssh-keygen -t dsa[B[17Dssh-keygen
[A[10C -y -f ~/.ssh/id_dsa > ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub[B[50D[B[1D[0m... somet
[A[9Cimes it is necessary to put correct permissions on ~/.ssh[B[66Dfold
[A[4Cer and files under it. Usually You want to do something like chmod
-R 600 ~/.ssh.  That will specify the read and write privileges only[B[68D
[Afor the owning user of the files in the folder and files and folders
under it.[B[9D[B[1DOnce this is done You can easily test You did everyth
[A[53Cing right by[B[65Dissuing:[B[8D[B[1D[1;32mssh source[B[10D
[0mand getting the prompt without the need to enter password or specify
username.[B[9D[B[1DOnce this is done and You have access to the source m
[A[53Cachine from[B[64Dtarget machine You're almost done. Now it's time 
[A[49Cto decide when You'll[B[70Dbackup Your BBS. The sane possibility w
[A[39Could be something like 4 A.M.[B[68D[B[1D2) Now once You have the
[A[24C copy of Your BBS at the target machine (and[B[68DYou can try if i
[A[16Ct transferred correctly by running the BBS on[B[61Dtarget)... it's
[A[15C time to archive it into the folder where the backups[B[68Dwill be
[A[7C stored. This is the next line:[B[38D[B[1D[1;32mtar -zcvf /app/a
[A[16Crc/bbs_`date +%Y%m%d`.tgz /app/bbs[B[50D[B[1D[0mtar is the comp
[A[15Cression program that makes archives easily opened on[B[67Dany syst
[A[8Cem. The used options are this:[B[38D[B[1D[32m-z [1m- gzips (com
[A[15Cpresses) the files to save some space[B[52D[0;32m-c [1m- create 
[A[12Cnew archive[B[23D[0;32m-v [1m- be verbose (this can be removed a
[A[38Cftewards everything works fine)[B[69D[0;32m-f [1m- this will all
[A[18Cow us to specify the filename[B[47D[B[1D[0mthe next word is the
[A[20C path to the destination where the backups will be[B[70Dplaced.  A
[A[10Cnd it will create files in the following format e.g.:[B[63Dbbs_201
[A[7C90220.tgz What we are using here is the ` bracket. When[B[62Dsometh
[A[6Cing is escaped in these on Linux it will cause bash to call[B[65Dsu
[A[2Cbprocess, run the command in it and return the result back as[B[63D
[Astring. So when we issue:[B[25D[B[1D[1;32m`date +%Y%m%d` [0mit will
[A[22C print the year, month and day and put it into[B[68Dthe filename
[B[1DThe third argument is simple the source of the archive to be made of
(in this case /app/bbs[B[22D[B[1D3) So now we have the rsynced copy on t
[A[39Carget. We compressed our very[B[68Dfirst copy of it. And what we n
[A[31Ceed is to somehow handle the growth of[B[69Dthe files in the time.
[A[22C What we will use here is the deletion or given[B[69Dfiles older t
[A[13Chan e.g. 7 days (or just any time You'll specify). This[B[68Dwill 
[A[5Callow us to have some full copies of BBS to go in case of failure
of the original. This will be used as follows:[B[46D[B[1D[1;32mfind /ap
[A[8Cp/arc -type f -mtime +7 -name '*.tgz' -execdir rm -- '{}' \;[B[68D
[0mfind is the program in Linux that will give us the list of files we
are seeking folder in the specified folder (1st argument). So it will[B[69D
[Aseek in /app/arc. Now we don't want to mess up with the directories.
That's the option -type f and we want to consider only files older[B[66Dth
[A[2Can 7 days with the tgz extension. This is done by the options:[B[64D
[32m-mtime +7 -name '*.tgz'[B[23D[B[1D[0mLastly we want to remove the 
[A[29Ccopies it returns (tgzs older than 7[B[65Ddays) and that's the res
[A[24Ct.[B[26D[B[1D4) Now we want to store these three lines into the 
[A[51Cshell script file[B[68Dthat we'll place into the root of the /app 
[A[43Cfolder (for example). So[B[67Dlet's put this into the /app/bbs_bac
[A[36Ckup.sh file:[B[48D[B[1D[32m#!/bin/bash[B[11Drsync [1m-razv -
[A[13C-delete source:/app/bbs /app[B[41D[0;32mtar [1m-zcvf /app/arc/bb
[A[21Cs_`date +%Y%m%d`.tgz /app/bbs[B[50D[0;32mfind [1m/app/arc -type 
[A[20Cf -mtime +7 -name '*.tgz' -execdir rm -- '{}' \;[B[68D[B[1D[0mT
[A[1Che first line is there only to make the system happy and provide
information on what are we dealing here with.[B[45D[B[1DWe'll give the /
[A[16Capp/backup_bbs.sh correct privileges so it could be[B[67Drun:
[B[1D[1;32mchmod u+x /app/backup_bbs.sh[B[28D[B[1D[0mThis will allow
[A[15C the owner of the file to run it. Now we can run it.[B[67DAnd see 
[A[8Cwhat will happen.[B[25D[B[1D5) Once You're happy with Your backup
[A[37C solution You can put it into the[B[70Dcron using:[B[11D[B[1D
[A[1;32mcrontab -e[B[10D[B[1D[0mand inserting something like this:
[B[1D[32m04 00 * * * [1m/app/backup_bbs.sh > /dev/null [0;32m# BACKUP B
[A[53CBS[B[55D[B[1D[0mAnd that's it. This will synchronize Your BBS o
[A[47Cn the target machine[B[67Dwith the source and provide compression 
[A[40Cand history of Your belowed[B[67DBBS.[B[4D[B[1DBTW: The above 
[A[15Cdescribed procedure assumes You want full backup of[B[66DBBS. If Y
[A[9Cou want Your backups smaller. You would move Your files[B[64Dfrom F
[A[6Cile Bases to another directory and create symlink. Then just[B[66Db
[A[1Cackup the program files and eventually the Message bases.[B[58D
Happy BBSing & take care[B[24D[B[1D[1;30mShinobi[B[7D[B[1DDISCLAIME
[A[9CR: I take no responsibility from the damage or harm caused by[B[70D
[Afollowing the principles and instructions described in this article.
|08Shinobi <.Phenom.>
