BackupPC

Introduction

Quote from the BackupPC website;

"BackupPC is a high-performance, enterprise-grade system for backing up Linux and WinXX PCs and laptops to a server's disk. BackupPC is highly configurable and easy to install and maintain."

This document contains notes on installing BackupPC to run on a Synology DiskStation, specifically the install was carried out on the DS212j model. This builds on other excellent documentation, referenced at the end of this document.

The document also describes installing lighttpd as the web-server to provide BackupPC's admin interface. This seems a small over-head to increase security by running both BackupPC and lighttpd under the same system user. It also allows you to separately choose whether to expose your BackupPC admin panel to the Internet or not.

Please also note Synology's disclaimer in the 'Introduction' section of SynologyDiskStation.

It is advisable to backup all your data on the device before attempting to modify it's installed software.

In command-line examples, where the line starts with a $ sign, this indicates the command is run as a normal user, whilst # indicates the command is run as the root user.

Installing BackupPC on Synology DiskStation

Preparation

Install ipkg as described in SynologyDiskStation. It is also recommended that you install Screen and a lightweight editor you are familiar with. E.g. [Vi], [Mg] or Nano. If you are unfamiliar with any of these editors, Nano is the quickest to get up-to-speed with.

Whenever you create a new shell, make sure /opt/bin is on the path. If it is a root shell, you may need /opt/sbin on the path too. See SynologyDiskStation for more information. If you set the path before running Screen
Check that /opt/bin in on the path for the backuppc user's shell. If not, add it.
```
    $ whoami
    $ echo $PATH
    $ export PATH=/opt/bin:$PATH
```
Optionally, install nano
```
    # ipkg install nano
```

Create a backuppc user

Create a backuppc user using the DSM web interface. Add the backuppc user to the 'users' group. There is no need to give the backkuppc user any other privileges
T.B.D. - Home directories.

Open a shell as the backuppc user and create a directory for the backuppc database denying access to others

    # su -s /bin/sh backuppc
    # mkdir -p /volume1/private/backuppc
    # chmod 700 /volume1/private/backuppc
    # chown backuppc.nobody /volume1/private/backuppc

Install lighttpd

Note that referenced line numbers are a guide and will vary as the file is edited.

Install lighttpd
```
    # ipkg install lighttpd
```

Edit /opt/etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf

Enable the following modules by uncommenting the lines they are on:

mod_access
mod_accesslog
mod_auth
mod_cgi

Change the server.document-root to /opt/local/www on line 40

Change the server.username to backuppc on line 187

Remove the lighttpd/index.html element from the index-file.names array and add index.cgi on line 48

    index-file.names            = ( "index.php", "index.html",
                                    "index.htm", "default.htm",
                                    "index.cgi" )

Locate the CGI module configuration section and uncomment the cgi.assign lines (lines 222-224)

    #### CGI module
    cgi.assign                 = ( ".pl"  => "/opt/bin/perl",
                           ".cgi" => "/opt/bin/perl" )

Note that the port number is specified by the server.port setting on line

8081 should be fine.

Locate the auth module configuration section (line 240) and uncomment the following lines. Change the auth.backend to htpasswd. Make sure you set the auth.backend.htpasswd.userfile option and not another, such as auth.backend.plain.userfile

    #### auth module
    ## read authentication.txt for more info
    auth.backend               = "htpasswd"
    auth.backend.htpasswd.userfile = "/opt/etc/lighttpd/lighttpd-htpasswd.user"
    ## debugging
    # 0 for off, 1 for 'auth-ok' messages, 2 for verbose debugging
    auth.debug                 = 0

Add an auth.require section as follows:

    auth.require               = ( "/cgi-bin" =>
                                   (
                                     "method"  => "basic",
                                     "realm"   => "BackupPC",
                                     "require" => "valid-user"
                                   )
                                 )

Change the ownership of the log directory

    # chown -R backuppc.nobody /opt/var/log/lighttpd

Create directory for the web server root

    # mkdir /volume1/private/www
    # chown backuppc.nobody /volume1/private/www

Restart lighttpd

    # /opt/etc/init.d/S80lighttpd restart

*Note*. The Media Server package also uses lighttpd. It's start and stop script kills all instances of lighttpd, which will include this one we are installing. Therefore, you will need to restart this instance after Media Server stops it. Examine `/volume1/@appstore/MediaServer/scripts/S86synodms.sh` for the cause. One workaround is to use a different name for this instance as follows:

        # ln -s /opt/sbin/lighttpd /opt/sbin/backuppchttpd

Edit /opt/etc/init.d/S80lighttpd and change the NAME of the executable on line 3 from lighttpd to backuppchttpd.

Install BackupPC

Download BackupPC from http://sourceforge.net/projects/backuppc/files/backuppc/
Install perl and other required packages
```
    # ipkg install perl optware-devel
```
You may need to uninstall the wget package as wget-ssl is installed with optware-devel and conflicts with the wget package
```
    # ipkg install wget-ssl
    # ipkg remove wget
```
You may get errors, but hopefully, wget-ssl was downloaded. If not, download it manually, then you can install the .ipk file directly. E.g.
```
    # ipkg install wget-ssl_1.12-2_arm.ipk
    # ipkg install libidn_1.25-1_arm.ipk
```
Download File::RsyncP source from http://perlrsync.sourceforge.net/

There is already an older version of Perl included with the DiskStation. The OS is based on Debian which uses Perl for important operations which we do not want to interfere with. For that reason, it is probably better to manually download and compile the few Perl packages we require, rather than use CPAN. See the Debian PerlFAQ for more information.

Create a working directory and compile the source code

    $ cd ~
    $ tar -xf File-RsyncP-0.68.tar.gz
    $ cd File-RsyncP-0.68
    $ perl Makefile.PL
    $ make LD=ld LINKTYPE=dynamic LDDFLAGS="-shared -O2"
    $ make LD=ld LINKTYPE=dynamic LDDFLAGS="-shared -O2" test

Note: the -O2 switch contains the capital letter O and not a zero

Then install as root:

    # cd ~backuppc/File-RsyncP-0.68/
    # make LD=ld LINKTYPE=dynamic LDDFLAGS="-shared -O2" install

Download the perl File::Listing module from http://search.cpan.org/~gaas/File-Listing-6.04/lib/File/Listing.pm and install it in the same way as described above for the File::RsyncP module

If you get a warning that the HTTP::Date module isn't installed, similarly download, build and install it first from http://search.cpan.org/~gaas/HTTP-Date-6.02/lib/HTTP/Date.pm

Install other BackupPC required packages:

    # ipkg install perl-compress-zlib
    # ipkg install perl-archive-zip

Extract the BackupPC archive file

T.B.D. User /volume1/homes/backuppc/src instead of /volume1/root
```
    # cd /volume1/root
    # tar -xf BackupPC-3.2.1.tar.gz
    # cd BackupPC-3.2.1
```
Configure BackupPC
```
    # perl configure.pl --config-dir=/opt/etc/backuppc --log-dir=/opt/var/log/backuppc
```
Accept the default values for each item, except as noted below:
- Install directory: /opt/local/backuppc
- Data directory: /volume1/private/backuppc
- CGI bin directory: /opt/local/www/cgi-bin
- Apache image directory: /opt/local/www/BackupPC
- URL for image directory: /BackupPC
Enable the backuppc user to run the ping command by installing and configuring sudo. If you wish to use an editor other than Vi, change the EDITOR environment variable to path of your preferred editor. The example is for Mg
```
    # ipkg install sudo
    # export EDITOR=/opt/bin/mg
    # visudo
```

Modify the User privilege specification section (line 72) by adding a line for backuppc as follows:

    ##
    ## User privilege specification
    ##
    root ALL=(ALL) ALL
    backuppc ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: /bin/ping

Edit /opt/etc/backuppc/config.pl

Modify the PingCmd entry (line 1655) as follows:

    $Conf{PingCmd} = '/opt/bin/sudo -u root $pingPath -c 1 -w 3 $host';

Run BackupPC and check the log for errors

    # su -s /bin/sh backuppc
    $ /opt/local/backuppc/bin/BackupPC -d
    $ tail /opt/var/log/backuppc/LOG
    $ /opt/local/backuppc/bin/BackupPC_serverMesg status info
    $ /opt/local/backuppc/bin/BackupPC_serverMesg status jobs
    $ /opt/local/backuppc/bin/BackupPC_serverMesg status hosts

Create a symbolic link so that the BackupPC_Admin script is seen by lighttpd as having a .pl extension. Also create an index.cgi version.

    # ln -s /opt/local/www/cgi-bin/BackupPC_Admin /opt/local/www/cgi-bin/BackupPC_Admin.pl
    # ln -s /opt/local/www/cgi-bin/BackupPC_Admin /opt/local/www/cgi-bin/index.cgi

Modify /opt/etc/backuppc/config.pl - line 2019
```
    $Conf{CgiAdminUsers}     = '*';
```
Create a password file
```
    # /usr/syno/apache/bin/htpasswd -c -m /opt/etc/lighttpd/lightttpd-htpasswd.user USERNAME
```
To add more users, use the same command, but without the -c (create file) option.

BackupPC Startup Script

The initial folder that the BackupPC source was extracted too to contains a sub-directory named init.d which contains various versions of startup scripts for different operating systems. The paths in these scripts have been set appropriately by the BackupPC installation process. The original versions are stored in the src sub-directory. Alternatively, you could use one of the scripts published in some of the documents referenced at the end of this document.

The instructions here modify the Debian version to suit our requirements. Copy the BackupPC modified version to the Synology DiskStation startup folder.

    # cp /volume1/root/BackupPC-3.2.1/init.d/debian-backuppc /opt/etc/init.d/S82backuppc
    # chmod 755 /opt/etc/init.d/S82backuppc

Then make the changes indicated by the following unified diff:

--- /volume1/root/BackupPC-3.2.1/init.d/debian-backuppc 2013-02-09 19:31:35.000000001 +0000
+++ /opt/etc/init.d/S82backuppc 2013-02-10 14:21:34.000000001 +0000
@@ -7,6 +7,8 @@
 # Distributed with BackupPC version 3.2.1, released 24 Apr 2011.
 #

+# Modified to run on Synlogoy DiskStation - Frank Dean - 10-Feb-2013
+
 set -e

 #
@@ -23,31 +25,38 @@
 case "$1" in
   start)
     echo -n "Starting $NAME: "
-    start-stop-daemon --start --pidfile $LOGDIR/BackupPC.pid \
-               -c $USER --exec $BINDIR/$DAEMON -- -d
+    /opt/bin/su $USER -s /bin/sh -c "$BINDIR/$DAEMON -d"
     echo "ok."
     ;;
   stop)
     echo -n "Stopping $NAME: "
-    start-stop-daemon --stop --pidfile $LOGDIR/BackupPC.pid -u $USER \
-               --oknodo --retry 30 -x /usr/bin/perl
+    /opt/bin/killall $DAEMON
     echo "ok."
       ;;
   restart)
     echo -n "Restarting $NAME: "
-    start-stop-daemon --stop --pidfile $LOGDIR/BackupPC.pid -u $USER \
-               --oknodo --retry 30 -x /usr/bin/perl
-    start-stop-daemon --start --pidfile $LOGDIR/BackupPC.pid \
-               -c $USER --exec $BINDIR/$DAEMON -- -d
+    $0 stop
+    sleep 1
+    $0 start   
     echo "ok."
     ;;
+  status)
+    PID=`ps | /bin/grep "BackupPC -d" | /bin/grep /opt/bin/perl | /opt/bin/perl -lane 'print $F[0]'`
+    if [ -n "$PID" ]; then
+        echo "$NAME is running with PID $PID"
+    else
+        echo "$NAME is not running"
+    fi
+    ;;
   reload|force-reload)
     echo "Reloading $NAME configuration files"
-    start-stop-daemon --stop --pidfile $LOGDIR/BackupPC.pid \
-               --signal 1 -x /usr/bin/perl
+    PID=`ps | /bin/grep "BackupPC -d" | /bin/grep /opt/bin/perl | /opt/bin/perl -lane 'print $F[0]'`
+    if [ -n "$PID" ]; then
+        /opt/bin/kill -s 1 $PID
+    fi
     ;;
   *)
-    echo "Usage: /etc/init.d/$NAME {start|stop|restart|reload}"
+    echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart|reload}"
     exit 1
     ;;
 esac

After restarting the server, BackupPC should have been restarted too. Navigate to the BackupPC URL which should be of the form http://DISKSTATION_IP:8081/cgi-bin/BackupPC_Admin.pl or simply http://DISKSTATION_IP:8081/cgi-bin/ should work too.

DSM 5.1 Upgrade

This upgrade appears to have changed the location of some binaries. Attempting to start the BackupPC server, fails as follows:

# /opt/etc/init.d/S82backuppc start
Starting backuppc: 2014-11-15 11:31:40 $Conf{SmbClientPath} =
'/usr/syno/bin/smbclient' is not a valid executable program

Search for the new file locations:

# find /usr -name smbclient
/usr/bin/smbclient
# find /usr -name nmblookup
/usr/bin/nmblookup

The following changes are needed.

# vi /opt/etc/backuppc/config.pl
# : Amend $Conf{SmbClientPath} to /usr/bin/smbclient
# : Amend $Conf{NmbLookupPath} to /usr/bin/nmblookup
# : Amend $Conf{SshPath} to /usr/bin/ssh

Statistics

The Debian release of BackupPC maintains statistics relating to the pool size, displaying this information in a graph on the main page of the CGI application.

To see the graphs, you need to be logged in as a CGI admin user {CgiAdminUsers}

If you would like to capture statistics which are displayed in graphs on the status page of the cgi interface:

The section describes patching the upstream (BackupPC) release to apply the changes to include the graphs from the Debian release

Download BackupPC.patch and save it as /opt/local/backuppc/BackupPC.patch
Download GeneralInfo.patch and save it as /opt/local/backuppc/GeneralInfo.patch
Install the rrdtool package
```
    # ipkg install rrdtool
```

Make the files that are to be patched writable

    # cd /opt/local/backuppc
    # chmod u+w bin/BackupPC lib/BackupPC/CGI/GeneralInfo.pm

Apply the patches

    # patch -b -p0 < BackupPC.patch
    # patch -b -p0 < GeneralInfo.pm.patch
    # chown backuppc.users bin/BackupPC lib/BackupPC/CGI/GeneralInfo.pm
    # chmod 444 bin/BackupPC.orig lib/BackupPC/CGI/GeneralInfo.pm.orig

Troubleshooting

To debug any issues in the backup process, run the BackupPC_dump program interactively from the command line (whilst the BackupPC server process is running). E.g.

See also the Troubleshooting document in the BackupPC wiki.

References

-- Frank Dean - 9 Feb 2013

-- Frank Dean - 16 Oct 2005

Related Topics: DebianTips, LinuxHintsAndTips, SynologyDiskStation