Provided by: guerillabackup_0.5.0-1.1_all 
NAME
gb-storage-tool - Manage guerillabackup backup data storages
SYNOPSIS
gb-storage-tool --Config file --DryRun
DESCRIPTION
This is the manual page for the gb-storage-tool command. The tool is used to perform
operations on backup file storage locations as used by gb-backup-generator or
gb-transfer-service to store backup data.
Currently the tool supports checking storage file naming to identify incomplete backups
due to aborts during backup generation or transfer e.g. by reboots or crashes. To ignore
files for a reason, e.g. notes, add entries to the status file, e.g.
For all files defining valid backup data elements, configurable policies are applied. See
POLICIES section below for supported policies.
OPTIONS
--Config file
This optional parameter specifies an alternative configuration file instead of
/etc/guerillabackup/storage-tool-config.json.
--DryRun
This optional parameter will make gb-storage-tool perform policy checks only but will
not modify the storage, e.g. by deleting files flagged for deletion by a retention
policy.
POLICIES
gb-storage-tool can apply multiple policies to each backup data source but it is only
possible to have one policy of a given type (see policy types below). Which policies to
apply is defined by the gb-storage-tool configuration file "Policies" parameter. A regular
expression is used to select which sources policies should be applied to with the first
matching expression taking precedence. For each regular expression a list of polices with
parameters is defined. See /data/etc/storage-tool-config.json.template for examples.
To ease policy selection in large setups, policy inheritance can be used. A included
configuration (see "Include" configuration parameter) may also define policies, which can
extend or override the policies from the parent configuration(s) but also policies defined
just earlier in the same configuration. The overriding policy definition has to have a
higher priority, otherwise it will be ignored. To disable policy inheritance a
subconfiguration may set the "Inherit" configuration parameter to false (default is true).
This will also prevent any policies defined earlier in the very same configuration to be
ignored. Thus to disable inheritance for all sources in a configuration, the first entry
in the policy list should match all sources (.*) and disable inheritance.
Each policy defined in the gb-storage-tool configuration file may also keep policy status
information in the status file. The status data is usually updated as the policy is
applied unless there is a significant policy violation. That will require the user either
to fix the root cause of the violation (e.g. backup data was found to be missing) or the
user may update the status to ignore the violation. The later cannot be done interactively
via gb-storage-tool yet, one has to adjust the storage status configuration manually.
Therefore the user has to create or update the status configuration with the the backup
element name (the filename relative to the data directory without any suffix) as key and
the status information for the policy as described below (and sometimes given as hint on
the console too).
gb-storage-tool supports following policies:
Interval:
Verify that all sources generate backups at expected rates and all backups were
transferred successfully. Thus this policy eases spotting of system failures in the
backup system. An example policy configuration is:
...
"Policies": [
{
"Sources": "^(.*/)?root$",
"Inherit": false,
"List": [
{
"Name": "Interval",
"Priority": 100,
"FullMin": "6d20H",
"FullMax": "6d28H",
"IncMin": "20H",
"IncMax": "28H"
}, {
...
This configuration specifies that to all backups from source with name "root" (the
default backup created by the gb-backup-generator) an Interval policy shall be
applied. The policy will expect full backups every 7 days +- 4 hours and incremental
backups each day +- 4 hours.
When policy validation fails for a given source, the policy configuration may be
adjusted but also the violation may be ignored by updating the check status. Thus the
validation error will not be reported any more in the next run. The status data in
that case may look like:
...
"20200102000000-root-full": {
"Interval": {
"Ignore": "both"
}
},
...
This status indicates, that the both interval checks for the interval from the
previous full and incremental backup to the backup named above should be disabled. Do
disable only one type of checks, the "full" or "inc" type keyword is used instead of
"both".
While above is fine to ignore singular policy violations, also the policy itself may
be adjusted. This is useful when e.g. the backup generation intervals where changed at
the source. The status data in that case could look like:
...
"20200102000000-root-full": {
"Interval": {
"Config": {
"FullMax": "29d28H",
"FullMin": "29d20H",
"IncMax": "6d28H",
"IncMin": "6d20H"
}
}
},
...
LevelRetention:
This defines a retention policy defined by retention levels, e.g. on first level keep
each backup for 30 days, next level keep 12 weekly backups, on the next level keep 12
monthly backups, then 12 every three month and from that on only yearly ones.
...
"Policies": [
{
"Sources": "^(.*/)?root$",
"List": [
{
"Name": "LevelRetention",
"Levels": [
# Keep weekly backups for 30 days, including incremental backups.
{
"KeepCount": 30,
"Interval": "day",
"TimeRef": "latest",
"KeepInc": true
},
# Keep weekly backups for 3 month, approx. 13 backups.
{
"KeepCount": 13,
"Interval": "day",
"AlignModulus": 7
},
...
{
"KeepCount": 12,
"Interval": "month",
"AlignModulus": 3,
"AlignValue": 1
},
...
This configuration defines, that on the finest level, backups for 30 days should be
kept counting from the most recent on ("TimeRef": "latest"), including incremental
backups ("KeepInc": true). Thus for machines not producing backups any more, the most
recent ones are kept unconditionally.
On the next level, 13 weekly backups are kept, while may overlap with backups already
kept due to the first level configuration from above. But here only full backups will
be kept, that were generated after every 7th day due to "AlignModulus", preferring the
one generated on day 0.
At another level, only one backup is kept every three month, preferring the one from
the month numbered 1, 4, 7, 10 due to "AlignModulus" and "AlignValue". Hence the first
backup in January, April, ... should be kept.
Size:
This policy checks that backup data sizes are as expected as size changes may indicate
problems, e.g. a size increase due to archives, database dumps, local file backups ...
forgotten by the administrator (thus wasting backup space but sometimes also causing
security issues due to lack of as strict access permissions on those files compared to
their source), size increase due to rampant processes filling up database tables or
log files in retry loops (also monitoring should catch that), core dumps accumulating,
...
A "Size" policy can be defined for both full and incremental backups. For each backup
type, the accepted size range can be defined by absolute or relative values. Without
providing an expected size, the size of the first backup of that type seen is used.
Therefore for servers without accumulating data, following policy could be defined:
...
"Policies": [
{
"Sources": "^(.*/)?root$",
"List": [
{
"Name": "Size",
"Priority": 0,
"FullSizeMinRel": 0.9,
"FullSizeMaxRel": 1.1,
"IncSizeMin": 100000,
"IncSizeMaxRel": 10.0
}, {
...
This configuration will check sizes of "root" backups using the first full and
incremental size as reference. Full backups may vary in size between 90% and 110%
while incremental backups have to be at least 100kb large but may vary 10-fold in
size. All supported policy parameters are:
FullSizeExpect [size (int)]
Specify the expected full backup size. When missing the size of first full backup
seen is used as default.
FullSizeMax [size (int)]
Specify the absolute maximum backup size. You cannot use "FullSizeMaxRel" at the
same time.
FullSizeMin [size (int)]
Specify the absolute minimum backup size. You cannot use "FullSizeMinRel" at the
same time.
IncSizeExpect, IncSizeMax, IncSizeMin [size (int)]
Same as "Full..." parameters just for incremental backups. See above.
FullSizeMaxRel [ratio (float)]
Specify the maximum backup size in relation to the expected size (see
"FullSizeExpect"). You cannot use "FullSizeMax" at the same time.
FullSizeMinRel [ratio (float)]
Specify the minimum backup size in relation to the expected size (see
"FullSizeExpect"). You cannot use "FullSizeMin" at the same time.
IncSizeExpectRel [ratio (float)]
Specify the expected incremental backup size in relation to the expected full
backup size (see "FullSizeExpect"). You cannot use "IncSizeExpect" at the same
time.
IncSizeMaxRel, IncSizeMinRel [ratio (float)]
Same as "Full..." parameters just for incremental backups. See above.
When policy validation fails for a given source, the policy configuration may be
adjusted but also the violation may be ignored by updating the check status. Thus the
validation error will not be reported any more in the next run. The status data in
that case may look like:
...
"20200102000000-root-full": {
"Size": {
"Ignore": true
}
},
...
While above is fine to ignore singular policy violations, also the policy itself may
be adjusted. This is useful when e.g. the size of backups changed due to installing of
new software or services. The updated policy configuration can then be attached to the
first element it should apply to:
...
"20200102000000-root-full": {
"Size": {
"Config": {
"FullSizeExpect": 234567890,
"FullSizeMinRel": 0.9,
"FullSizeMaxRel": 1.1,
"IncSizeMin": 100000,
"IncSizeMaxRel": 10.0
}
}
},
...
FILES
/etc/guerillabackup/storage-tool-config.json
The default configuration file for gb-storage-tool tool. Use
storage-tool-config.json.template to create it. The template also contains the
documentation for each available parameter. The most relevant parameters for
gb-storage-tool are DataDir, Include and Status.
/var/lib/guerillabackup/state/storage-tool-status.json
This is the recommended location for the toplevel gb-storage-tool status file. The
file has to contain valid JSON data but also comment lines starting with #. See
POLICIES section above for description of policy specific status data.
BUGS
For guerillabackup setups installed from packages, e.g. .deb or .rpm files usually
installed via package management software, e.g. apt-get, aptitude, rpm, yast, please
report bugs to the package maintainer.
For setups from unpackaged software trunk, please report at
https://github.com/halfdog/guerillabackup/issues.
SEE ALSO
gb-transfer-service(1)
AUTHOR
halfdog <me@halfdog.net>
Wrote this manual page.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2022-2023 halfdog
This manual page was written for guerillabackup system on Linux systems, e.g. Debian.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of
the Lesser GNU General Public License, Version 3.
On Debian systems, the complete text of the Lesser GNU General Public License can be found
in /usr/share/common-licenses/LGPL-3.