GetBack Architecture and Behaviour

The GetBack System requires a remote server for storage of compressed files, and a local server from which the files are copied. We chose to use FreeNAS on a virtual machine in the network. Each server being backed up has its own user on the FreeNAS server.

The GetBack system will back up the following locations by default:

/etc Configuration files and settings for most applications and users.

/home All user home directories.

/root Often source files for applications are here.

/opt Certain custom applications are found installed here

And will also back up the following directories if they exist:

/openils This gets the contents of the Evergreen-ILS System

/dspace This gets the content of the DSpace Repository System

/var/lib/mysql This gets your MySQL files

/var/lib/postgresql/ This gets either or both versions 9.x and version 8.x Postgresql files.

/var/w* This gets most web-served details

It is easy to add other directory targets to the script when you need to. Bitnami RubyStack and Nagios install entirely into /usr/local, so you could need to backup that target to get applications such as these.

Purging Old Local Backups

GetBack automatically purges old local backups after 4 days. This lets you recover locally if you do something on Thursday, but don’t discover the problem until Monday. This is editable inside the application.