New settings handling
The major change with server 2.5.x and client 2.5.x is a complete redesign how settings are handled. The goal is to make it more explicit and consistent.
- Each setting has a button next to it which switches between inheriting the setting from the group, using the configuration value on the configuration page and using the value from the client, and for some setting merging client and server settings together
- File backup paths are now a normal setting just like any other. No more separation between paths to backup configured on the client and default directories to backup
This is a critical area of UrBackup and as such needs a lot of testing. Focus should be on if the 2.4.x client still more or less works with the 2.5.x server (and especially doesnât loose its connection settings for Internet servers).
Connect via web sockets
With 2.5.x clients can connect via web sockets to the server. Setup should be easy. Instead of âInternet server name/IPâ of e.g. âexample.comâ use âws://example.com:55414/socketâ. The real advantage comes into play if a real web server with SSL is setup in front. Either proxy the whole page, or serve the files and only proxy â/xâ via FastCGI (see manual), additionally proxy â/socketâ via web socket to âws://127.0.0.1:55414/socketâ. Then setup the clients to connect to âInternet server nameâ âwss://example.com/socketâ. Basic authentication, a different name and a different port should also work, e.g. âwss://username:password@example.com/socketâ.
Come back of macOS client
A test version of the macOS client is here. Please add your feedback!
Linux image backups
2.5.x can backup Linux clients (via dattobd or Linux device mapper snapshots). The use case is e.g. backing up a DigitalOcean instance. It is explicitly not to create image backups of all possible configurations e.g. LVM, mdraid, btrfs, âŚ
It can âlive restoreâ a root volume, i.e., overwrite the root volume of a currently running machine. So one can image backup e.g. a DigitalOcean droplet. To restore create a new instance (tested with Debian 10/buster) then run the restore script which overwrites the current instance with the backed up instance using a trick to put the currently running system files into (compressed) memory.
Dattobd and the Linux device mapper supports Changed Block Tracking (CBT), so image (and file) backups are done with CBT.
The Linux device mapper snapshots scripts are currently only tested on Debian 10 and with the root volume. It needs to hook into the boot sequence (initramfs) to backup the root volume. For other volumes it probably needs to hook into udev. Help getting it running on other distributions/with non-root volumes would be welcome!
Linux image backup howto
Backup:
- To only backup used space install partclone (e.g.
apt install partclone). This is currently supported for ext* and xfs. If partclone is not present itâll backup unused space. - Install the (binary) client and select either dattobd or the Linux device mapper for snapshotting
- If you are using dattobd: Install dattobd dattobd/INSTALL.md at master ¡ datto/dattobd ¡ GitHub
Restore:
- On the server browse to the image backup to restore
- Click on âRestore Linux imageâ
- Copy & paste the command into a new instance and follow the instructions (the command has a timeout (token), so after a while it should not work anymore)
Testing (image backup + file backup with CBT)
To test if CBT works correctly with file backups please enable Debugging: Verify file backups using client side hashes (for Internet clients with client-side hashing) or Debugging: End-to-end verification of all file backups in the advanced settings.
To test image backups enable md5sums creation on the client via touch /usr/local/var/create_md5sums_imagebackup. The client will then create a file (with date+time in the name) at /usr/local/var/md5sums-* for each image backup listing all files in the image plus their md5sum. Copy that file to server, mount the image backup then verify the md5sums with cd /backup/client/image_mnt; md5sums --quiet -c /path/to/md5sums-file.txt. The only files with checksum errors should be the .datto-*/.overlay-* files in the root directory and swap files (those get automatically excluded from backup).
Thanks for any help with testing and feedback!
Upgrade process
As always: Replace the executables (via the installers) and the database of the server/client will be updated on first running it.
Downgrade process (server)
Stop the UrBackup server, restore C:\Program Files\UrBackupServer\urbackup or /var/urbackup from a backup before upgrade and then install the previous version over the beta release.
On testing
Please see Having problems with UrBackup? Please read before posting for what kind of information to add when reporting issues. Reports such as âX does not workâ are useless. In general, at the very least, think about what kind of information one would need to reproduce the problem in a different environment. Best case you debug the problem yourself and then post the fix.
Changes with client 2.5.15
- Start filesrv before accepting commands
- Donât update settings on upgrade if no paths are configured and setting file doesnât exist yet
- Fix waiting for connection to server when restoring image
- Cleanup snapshot later if it cannot be deleted because it is in use
- Build glibc client build with older glibc
Changes with server 2.5.21
- Make vhdx support compile with older compilers
- Build Debian package on older Debian so it works on more versions
- Handle merge settings which cannot be configured on client
- Select correct use value for old setting config
Changes with server 2.5.20 beta
- Add vhdx support
- Use GPT partitioning for larger volume images