Cloud Backup

Cloud Backup is a complete and fully automated incremental cloud backup solution using free open-source tools for MacOS. It combines the power of dar, par2, and rclone to perform incremental backups, ensure data integrity, and interact with the cloud, respectively. These tools are readily installed via Homebrew. launchd services take care of scheduling incremental backups, detecting when moving onto the preferred WiFi network, and take note of disk (un)mounts. A workspace is created in memory for speed and avoiding disk wear-and-tear and some of the work is parallelized for efficiency. Optionally, install Growl and growlnotify to receive notifications.

Usage

Move the folder containing Cloud Backup to Library/Application Support in your home directory. Configure your preferred WiFi NETWORK in etc/config, which contains many other parameters that can be tuned to your needs.

Each file in etc/config.d configures a backup target. Its parameters and their meaning are listed in the table below.

parameter	meaning
BACKUP_NAME	base name for the backup
SOURCE	folder to back up
TARGET	rclone remote path
DESTINATION	directory to restore files to

From the bin directory run:

./cloud_level-0.bash

This could take a while.

Copy net.christiaanboersma.cloud_backup.plist from the share folder to Library/LaunchAgents in your home directory. Log out and back in.

Restoring from backup

Restoring entire backups is done with cloud_restore.bash from the bin directory:

./cloud_restore.bash documents

The first argument matches a file in etc/config.d. Use cloud_restore_file.bash to restore a single file:

./cloud_restore_file.bash documents Documents/myfile.txt

The first argument again matches a file in etc/config.d and the second argument is the file to restore.

Trimming backups

Trimming backups is done with cloud_trim.bash from the bin directory:

./cloud_trim.bash documents 10

The first argument matches a file in etc/config.d and the second the level to trim up to.

Take care to follow up with a level-x backup:

./cloud_level-x.bash documents

Note that this may take significantly longer than usual, as the increment will be against and earlier backup.

Notes

1. Cloud storage is required and rclone needs to be configured to access it.
2. Despite incremental backups, cloud space requirements will only grow. Use cloud_trim.bash to trim backups followed by a cloud_level-x.bash backup.
3. Logging is done to Library/Logs/cloud_backup.log in your home directory.
4. dar, par2, and rclone paths are hardcoded to be in /usr/local/bin.
5. unbuffer is used to disable output buffering and can be readily installed with Homebrew.

BSD-3 License

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

3. Neither the name of the copyright holder nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

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