Backup concept

A backup server which can be woken via wake-on-lan will pull data from live severs via rsnapshot . Waking, creating a backup, and shutting down will be done from a specific live server.

Key generation and automated login

First create an SSH key which will authorize the backup server against the live servers: On the backup server run ssh-keygen -b 4096 -f backup_auth. The generated file backup_auth.pub has to be appended to /root/.ssh/authorized_keys to enable automated login. Later we will limit commands availabe to rsync only for safety reasons. Check that the clients /etc/ssh/sshd_config sets PermitRootLogin without-password so that a first connection test from the backup server can succeed. Do this vice-versa for the live server which will later control the backup server.

Rsnapshot

Run aptitude install rsnapshot and modify /etc/rsnapshot.conf to at least (see comments in config file for explanations):

snapshot_root <path>
no_create_root 1
cmd_ssh /usr/bin/ssh
retain ...
ssh_args -i /root/.ssh/backup_auth

# live server directories
backup root@server.local:/etc/ ./
backup root@server.local:/home/ ./
[...]

Limiting rights of automated login

Extract rrsync (restricted rsync) from rsync scripts: gunzip /usr/share/doc/rsync/scripts/rrsync.gz -c > /usr/local/bin/rrsync and make it executable chmod +x /usr/local/bin/rrsync. The backup auth key can now be restricted in /root/.ssh/authorized_keys. Prepend the entry with command="/usr/local/bin/rrsync -ro /" which limits access with this key to just this command. Additionnally limiting measures can be implemented by adding further restrictions after command:

command="/usr/local/bin/rrsync -ro /",no-pty,no-agent-forwarding,no-port-forwarding,no-X11-forwarding,no-user-rc ssh-rsa ...

Additionally change PermitRootLogin in /etc/ssh/sshd_config to forced-commands-only.

Automation

Waking the backup server

wakeonlan [...]

Creating backups

ssh -i <keyfile> rsnapshot [...]

Keyfile should authenticate the live server against the backup server.

Shutting the backup server down

ssh -i <keyfile> /sbin/ethtool -s eth0 wol g
ssh -i <keyfile> /sbin/shutdown -h -t 1