CVS Backup, October 27, 2004

Setting up Rsync

The following short tutorial walks you through the steps you need to take in order to use SSH and Rsync to backup your CVS Repository.

Ensure Rsync is installed, if not install it.

[root@fedora root]# rpm -q rsync

        rsync-2.6.2-1

Ensure open ssh is installed, if not install it.

[root@fedora root]# rpm -q openssh

        openssh-3.6.1p2-34

Add the user that will be executing rsync, I use the name 'fetch'.

[root@fedora etc]# adduser fetch -g users

Generate an ssh private / public key pair for fetch (press enter for the passphrase if you dont want one.)

[root@fedora etc]# su - fetch

        [fetch@fedora fetch]$ mkdir .ssh

        [fetch@fedora fetch]$ cd .ssh

        [fetch@fedora .ssh]$ ssh-keygen -t dsa

        Generating public/private dsa key pair.

        Enter file in which to save the key (/home/fetch/.ssh/id_dsa):

        Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):

        Enter same passphrase again:

        Your identification has been saved in /home/fetch/.ssh/id_dsa.

        Your public key has been saved in /home/fetch/.ssh/id_dsa.pub.

Copy your public key to the remote server.

[fetch@fedora .ssh]$ scp 
        id_dsa.pub someserver.ca:/home/fetch/.ssh/id_dsa_fedora.pub

        id_dsa.pub     100% |*****************************| 602   00:00

On the remote server copy your copied public key into the authorized_keys file.

[fetch@someserver.ca .ssh]$ cat id_dsa.pub >> authorized_keys

Test your connection to the remote server

[fetch@fedora fetch]$ ssh someserver.ca

        Last login: Wed Oct 27 10:45:22 2004 from home.ca

Create a test file on the remote server

fetch@someserver fetch $ mkdir source

        fetch@someserver fetch $ touch source/testfile.txt

Exit from the remote server and test rsync from local server

fetch@someserver fetch $ exit

        Connection to someserver.ca closed.

        [fetch@fedora fetch]$ rsync -av --delete -e ssh fetch@someserver.ca:~/source ~/

        receiving file list ... done

        source/

        source/testfile.txt

        

        wrote 36 bytes  read 139 bytes  116.67 bytes/sec

        total size is 0  speedup is 0.00

Create a script that will do the backup for you, I have included one here as an example. This script will need to be run by cron.

Run the script manually to ensure all privileges are set properly (you may need to modify /etc/group to ensure 'fetch' has all the proper rights)

Once you have confirmed the file runs, set it up in cron.

Ensure you have cron installed.

Let it run and have fun knowing your source code is safe!

Setting up Rsync

Good luck!