opencoff/snapbak

Rotating tarsnap backup script

Brief Description

snapbak is a very simple tarsnap frontend. Main features:

• No config file needed; completely driven by command line
• Do hourly, daily, weekly, monthly backup with N sets per type
• Deletes older archives (older than N sets)

Requirements

• Python 2.7.x (on any supported platform)

• Tested on:

  • Debian Linux amd64 (testing, unstable)
  • OpenBSD 5.7, 5.8 - amd64, i386
  • OS X Mavericks, OS X Yosemite

Installation

Copy the snapbak script to your preferred location in $PATH. I put this in $HOME/bin.

Usage

Brief usage:

snapbak Keyfile Archive hourly|daily|weekly|monthly [Max-Sets] Dir [Dir ...]

Positional arguments:

Keyfile     Tarsnap keyfile
Archive     The tarsnap archive prefix
type        Backup type; one of 'hourly', 'daily', 'weekly' or 'monthly'
Dir         One or more directories to backup
Max-Sets    An integer argument denoting the maximum number of previous
            backups to retain.

If Max-Sets is not provided, the program uses the following defaults:

• Hourly: 24
• Daily: 10
• Weekly: 6
• Monthly: 14

If you have a directory name that can be interpreted as an integer and thus confused for "Max-Sets", you can disambiguate by providing a valid "Max-Sets" value or "-" if you want to use the program supplied defaults.

Optional arguments:

-h, --help          show this help message and exit
-n, --dry-run       Do a dry-run, don't actually commit things [False]
-v, --verbose       Show verbose progress messages [False]
-c D, --cachedir D  Use 'D' as the tarsnap cache dir []
-V                  Show version information and quit

The archive name in the tarsnap cloud is derived as Archive-Type-Tstamp; where:

• Archive is the archive name prefix from the command line
• Type is the backup type (daily, weekly etc.)
• Tstamp is the current date, time in the format YYYY-MMM-DD-hh-mm; where: YYYY: four digit year, MMM: short month name, DD: two digit date, hh: two digit hour in 24 hour format, mm: two digit minute.

Examples

• Backup dirA, dirB identified by 'work' and keep last 7 days worth of daily backups:

  snapbak /path/to/Keyfile.key work daily 7 dirA dirB
  

• Backup directories 10, 20 identified by photos and keep last 10 weeks worth of weekly backups:

  snapbak /path/to/Keyfile.key photos weekly 10 10 20
  

  In the above example, the first 10 is the number of backup sets and the second 10 is the directory name.

• Do a monthly backup of directories 10, 20 identified by the prefix foo and use the program defaults for number of retained backups:

  snapbak /path/to/Keyfile.key foo monthly - 10 20
  

FAQ

• How do I know which archives are stored in the cloud?

  tarsnap --keyfile /path/to/Keyfile.key --list-archives

• Why do you need to do hourly backups?

  I don't know. But if you do, snapbak supports it.

• How many daily, weekly and monthly sets do I need to keep?

  It depends on your needs. I use the following:

  • 10 daily backups
  • 6 weekly backups
  • 14 monthly backups

  And no, I don't use hourly backups.