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An agile user of raspiBackup - Franjo-G - wrote a very convenient tool called raspiBackupDialog In a dialog driven way the most used options for backup and restore are queried. raspiBackup snapshots are supported. In particular the restore is very easy: You get a list of all existing backups and can select which one to use for the restore.

 

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raspiBackup has a new logo. Friendly forum members from the German Raspberry forum helped me to create one.
 

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10 years ago today the first version of raspiBackup was stored in my local cvs.

revision 1.1
date: 2013-08-07 21:28:14 +0200; author: framp; state: Exp; commitid: 10052029FC71A98602F;
Initial version
=============================================================================

 

This cvs unfortunately no longer exists because it would be interesting to see how the script has changed over the 10 years. Initially there were about 50 lines of code. Today raspiBackup has about 8000 lines of code.

Update 5/2025: The wayback machine has a copy from 2013/6 and there I found an initial version or raspiBackup. You can find it here. Actually this version has 314 LOCs instead of 50.

 

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raspiBackup creates on a regular base backups and keeps a configurable number of backups which can be restored if needed. A lot of folks want to have the latest backup restored already on a second device which can be bootet immediately if the system fails for some reasons to reduce the downtime of the system.  raspiBackup doesn't support to create a clone. But it's possible with a small helper tool which executes a restore just after the backup. If rsync as the backup type is used the restore is actually no restore but a synchronization of the changes between the last restored backup and latest backup which is in general very fast.

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Invocationsyntax and -options

raspiBackup has to be invoked as user root or with sudo. The invocation syntax is

raspiBackup.sh Option1 Option2 Option3 ... backupdirectory 
and starting with Release 0.6.6 you can omit the extension .sh
 

raspiBackup Option1 Option2 Option3 ... backupdirectory

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Visit this page to get a ligh level overview about raspiBackup. Much more details you will find here.

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With raspiBackup you can create regular backups of your Raspberry. In addition you can restore a backup to any SD card. A new partition table is created on the target SD card and the backup data is restored on the partitions. If an external root filesystem was saved with raspiBackup this filesystem will also be restored to an external device.

Recently I got issues in github because restore failed. It's strictly recommended to restore your backup with the same OS the backup was created with. You're free to use another Linux release but this may the restore to fail because of different versions of the Linux tools which are usedto backup and restore the backup. In particular it's because of an incompatible change in sfdisk in Bullseye. Just use the OS the backup was created to restore the backup!
 

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Starting with release 0.6.5 of raspiBackup an itelligent rotation strategy of your backups is supported. It's also called GFS (grandfather-father-son backup). The implementation was inspired by Manuel Dewalds article Automating backups on a Raspberry Pi NAS

raspiBackup retains following backups per default if a daily backup is created:

1) Backup of the current day and the last 6 days

2) Backup of the current week and the last 3 weeks

3) Backup of the current month  and the last 11 months

4) Backup of the current year and the last two years

If weekly backups are created there will be no daily backups kept. Different retention values for daily, weekly, monthly and yearly can be defined with an option, e.g. if you want to retain weekly, monthly and yearly backups. Keep in mind the weekly backup day then will become the day of the weekly and monthly backup: If you configure Monday as the weekly backup day your monthly backup will be the first Monday of every month. Yout yearly backup will be the first Monday of the year. Iy you create a weekly backup every Sunday the monthly backup will be the first Sunday of the month and the yearly backup will be the first Sunday of the year.
 

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Purpose of this page is to explain step by step how to use raspiBackup to create a backup imediately and how configure raspiBackup in 5 minutes to create a backup of your Raspberry on a regular base. This page describes for different platforms (Linux, Mac or Windows) how to restore the backup. After testing the backup and restore the next step should be to check which services have to be stopped before the backup starts. Finally cron (starting with Installer 0.4.8 systemd timer) should be configured to start raspiBackup on a regular base. Later on when you have some spare time read this page carefully to check which additional features of raspiBackup are useful for you and update the raspiBackup configuration accordingly. In any case it's strongly recommended to read the FAQ. The raspiBackup installer can be used to uninstall raspiBackup completely if for some reasons raspiBackup does not meet your requirements.

Note:  In 5 minutes raspiBackup will be installed and configured if you have basic Linux knowledge. Otherwise you will need more time even the installer helps to create a basic raspiBackup configuration - unfortunately.

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There exist three types of messages:

1) Informational  - Messagenumber ends with I

2) Warning - Messagenumber ends with W

3) Error - Messagenumber ends with E

Most errormessages of raspiBackup give detailed information about the root cause. Sometimes it's required to get additional information in order to get rid of them. raspiBackup has about 200 errormessages and it's so boring to explain all of them here. If you miss a message first use your search engine and serach for the message number. if you still don't find an answer add the message text in a comment at the end of the page and the message with more detailed explanations will be addded on this page. That way the most common raspiBackup messages will show up on this page.

Messages in the number range from 0-999 are written by raspiBackup. Messages from 1000-1999 are written by sample plugins. All other number ranges are custom plugin messages.

In addition raspiBackup terminates with an error code which oints to the root cause.  A list of error codes is available at the end of this page.

If the information for a message does'nt help just use your seach engine to search for the message number (RBK....).

 

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raspiBackup helps to create backups of a running Raspberry with no shutdown or manual intervention which means your can save or clone your SD card during normal operation. An exported root partition will be saved too. Important services will be stopped just before starting the backup and are started again when the backup finished. Any device which can be mounted on Linux can be used as backupspace (USB disk, USB stick, nfs, samba, sshfs, ...). The backup image can be created with dd, tar or rsync using hardlinks. Restore is possible on Windows or Linux. Source Raspbian may have been installed on SD card only or the boot partition may be on SD card and the root partition on an external USB device like USB SSD or USB stick. Raspbian installed on an USB device only using USB boot mode is also supported

 

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Frequent asked questions about raspiBackup. Every new user of raspiBackup should read all questions and answers.

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raspiBackup has some helper scrips which are available on github for download.

1) raspiBackupWrapper.sh : Helps to do additional stuff before and after invocation of raspiBackup. The backuppartition is mounted already before starting raspiBackup and unmounted if it wasn't mounted when starting. Some basic bash scripting knowlege is required to customize the script for individual needs.

2) raspiBackupNfsWrapper.sh: Check if a NFS server is online and start raspiBackup. Don't start raspiBackup if the server is offline. This script can be used out of the box. Some constants regarding the nfs server have to be customized.

3) raspiBackupRestore2Image.sh: This script allows to convert a tar or rsync backup which was created in normal backup mode into a dd image. pishrink is used to make sure the image is as small as possible. kmbach suggested to create this script. No customization of the script required.

4) raspiImageMail.sh: THis script was created by raspiBackup user kmbach. He wanted to get an eMail at the end of raspiBackupRestore2Image.sh. eMail configuration is extracted from raspiBackup configuration file.

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