{"id":569,"date":"2017-08-30T13:03:00","date_gmt":"2017-08-30T12:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chewett.co.uk\/blog\/?p=569"},"modified":"2017-11-18T21:43:57","modified_gmt":"2017-11-18T21:43:57","slug":"creating-raspberry-pi-backup-script-scp-bash-windows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chewett.co.uk\/blog\/569\/creating-raspberry-pi-backup-script-scp-bash-windows\/","title":{"rendered":"Creating a Raspberry Pi backup script with scp and Bash on Windows"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post describes a simple way to keep backups of a Raspberry Pi or any other Linux computer.<\/p>\n

<\/h2>\n

Why do I need backups of my Raspberry Pi?<\/h2>\n

Some of the nodes in my cluster<\/a> are going to be compute only, meaning that they will just run what is asked of them. Others will hold important information such as a database or files that the other nodes are processing. An important feature of having a cluster is ensuring that any information is always available.<\/p>\n

There are a couple ways of doing this but the most simple one is ensuring that your important data is always backed up. Then if something were to happen to an important node it can be replaced and the data can be restored.<\/p>\n

In the future I will look into more advanced ways of ensuring the data is spread across the cluster but for now a low tech solution (having a script to save important files) is simple and easy to use.<\/p>\n

Testing what scp can do for us<\/h2>\n

To run and backup the script I am going to use the Linux tool scp<\/code>\u00a0which stands for Secure Copy. Originally this would have been only accessible to those running Linux or some kind of emulation tools. However recently Windows released “Windows Subsystem for Linux” which allows you to run the core of Ubuntu on Windows.<\/p>\n

This guide assumes you have installed Windows Subsystem for Linux<\/a> or are running a Linux based OS.<\/p>\n

The program scp<\/code>\u00a0can be used to transfer files to and from remote Linux operating systems over SSH.<\/p>\n

A basic command to copy a file from your raspberry pi (or other Linux systems) is:<\/p>\n

scp bunker-master2:\/home\/pi\/file.txt file.txt<\/pre>\n
Here we are copying a file called file.txt<\/code>\u00a0in the \/home\/pi<\/code>\u00a0 directory from a computer called bunker-master2<\/code>\u00a0and saving it as file.txt<\/code>.<\/p>\n
This is helpful but only lets us copy a single file at a time. We can improve this command by replacing the second filename with a dot. This tells scp to put the file in the current directory<\/p>\n
scp bunker-master2:\/home\/pi\/file.txt .<\/pre>\n
This means we dont need to specify the filename of the file we are copying. It will always use the name of the file as it exists on the remote host. In addition to using dot to mean the current directory, we can use the asterisk character *<\/code>\u00a0to use as a wildcard. By changing the above command and replacing file.txt<\/code> with an asterisk we can make it download the entire directory.<\/p>\n
scp bunker-master2:\/home\/pi\/* .<\/pre>\n
Creating the backup script<\/h2>\n
Now the improved scp<\/code>\u00a0command copies nearly every file (note, it wont copy dot files) from the pi<\/code>\u00a0home directory. Using this we can change what we copy to copy everything of importance to me off the Raspberry Pi. Below is now my backup file which I can use to backup my Pi.<\/p>\n
rm -rf home var\r\nscp -r bunker-master2:\/home\/* home\/\r\nscp -r bunker-master2:\/var\/www\/* var\/www\/<\/pre>\n
The first command we run is to delete the old copies we downloaded from the Raspberry Pi. This means any files that were deleted on the Raspberry Pi will not be stored on our computer.<\/p>\n
Depending on what is important to you, you might want to consider backing up \/etc<\/code> for your configuration files.<\/p>\n
I have added these commands to a file called backup.sh<\/code>\u00a0and I can run the file by running .\/backup.sh<\/code>\u00a0in the bash terminal.<\/p>\n
In the future, I am going to improve this backup method as there are a couple of downsides to using it. One of them is that even if a file hasn’t changed from your local archive, it will still copy it across. In addition, this won’t backup files such as a MySQL database which to properly backup require\u00a0a different type of backup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This post describes a simple way to keep backups of a Raspberry Pi or any other Linux computer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":612,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,122],"tags":[159,158,39,37,147,29,156],"class_list":["post-569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-informational","category-raspberry-pi-cluster","tag-backup","tag-bash","tag-linux","tag-raspberry-pi","tag-ubuntu","tag-windows","tag-windows-subsystem-for-linux"],"wppr_data":{"cwp_meta_box_check":"No"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chewett.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/backing_up_a_rasperry_pi.jpg?fit=800%2C800&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2toWX-9b","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":613,"url":"https:\/\/chewett.co.uk\/blog\/613\/backup-raspberry-pi-rsync\/","url_meta":{"origin":569,"position":0},"title":"Backup a Raspberry Pi with Rsync","author":"Chewett","date":"December 20, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"I am going to upgrade our previous Raspberry Pi backup script that previously used Secure Copy to one that uses rsync. The primary reason for this is that rsync will only copy new or changed files over. 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