Mathieu De Keyzer's face

 Backup on AWS glacier

HTTP enthusiasts

Goal

AWS glacier offers a low cost solution for archiving files. Here is how I implementing it to backup my server's files.

Approach with Docker, first try

I try to have a server at home where every services are dockerized. The only tools that I still use on the host are:

  • midnight commander : not that I really need it but it reminds me of my dad
  • ssh : to have a remote access to the host
  • crontab : in order to schedule docker run commands

So it's important for me to have a dockerized solution. Hopefully the AWS client is integrated into the elasticms docker image.

Here is my first try:

docker run --rm -it -v /home/theus/docker/aws:/home/default/.aws:ro -v /mnt/backups/theus:/data  elasticms/admin aws s3 sync --storage-class GLACIER /data s3://septune

The initital upload cost me, for about 240GB, 51$ and the monthly cost for that volume of data is about 0.50$/month which is nice.

Optimization

Obviouly in my case, it's useless

  • to keep deleted files
  • to activate the interactif mode
docker run --rm -v /home/theus/docker/aws:/home/default/.aws:ro -v /mnt/backups/theus:/data  elasticms/admin aws s3 sync --delete --storage-class GLACIER /data s3://septune

Schedule it

Here is my crontab command (crontab -e):

0 6 * * * docker run --rm -v /home/theus/docker/aws:/home/default/.aws:ro -v /mnt/backups/theus:/data  elasticms/admin aws s3 sync --delete --storage-class GLACIER /data s3://septune 2>>~/cron_error.log

Tips

If it's easy to save my docker context I also have to backup the rest of my configuration

Backup my router config

In your router it's possible to backup the config. You should have somewhere a download config link.

But, and I'm probably not the only one, I usually forgot to backup my config when I'm updating it. So when I need it the last version that I have is obsolete.

If you open your browser's debug toolbar (at least for Chrome), just before clicking on the backup config link, you'll be able to save the request in a curl format: Right click > copy > copy as cURL.

You chould have something like in your clipboard


curl 'http://192.168.0.1/nvrambak.bin' \
  -H 'Connection: keep-alive' \
  -H 'Pragma: no-cache' \
  -H 'Cache-Control: no-cache' \
  -H 'Authorization: Basic dZZZZZZZZZZ3bDEzNzc=' \
  --compressed \
  --insecure \
  --output /mnt/backups/theus/dumps/save.bin

Based on that you can develop this little bash script:

#/bin/bash
curl 'http://192.168.0.1/nvrambak.bin' \
  -H 'Connection: keep-alive' \
  -H 'Pragma: no-cache' \
  -H 'Cache-Control: no-cache' \
  -H 'Authorization: Basic dGhldXM6ZmV3bDEzNzc=' \
  --compressed \
  --insecure \
  --output /mnt/backups/theus/dumps/router_ddwrt_$(date +%u).bin

Up to you to schedule it periodically. An example with crontab:

18 * * * * ~/.local/bin/router_backup.sh 2>>~/router_backup_error.log

Backup my crontab config

In case of a disaster I won't have to reinvent my crontab config:

crontab -l > /mnt/backups/theus/crontab.bak

The same in my crontab config :

0 5 * * * crontab -l > /mnt/backups/theus/crontab.bak 2>>~/cron_error.log

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