Speech:Summer 2012 Backup


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What to use
We are using Dropbox for backups. The reason Dropbox was selected is due to the following:
 * 1) It is free
 * 2) It is relatively simple to set up
 * 3) It is easy to use
 * 4) It runs on Linux and can be used entirely from the Command Line Interface
 * 5) It backs up data in the background

Installation Instructions
The majority of these instructions were obtained from this page. Additional information and modifications were made so that this process can be followed to install Dropbox as a service on caesar.

Before beginning make sure that you are logged in as root. cd ~ wget -O dropbox.tar.gz "http://www.dropbox.com/download/?plat=lnx.x86" tar -xvzf dropbox.tar.gz Then we need to run Dropbox and link it to this machine. ~/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd You should get a message like this: This client is not linked to any account... Please visit https://www.dropbox.com/cli_link?host_id=7d44a557aa58f285f2da0x67334d02c1 to link this machine
 * First download the CLI tools from Dropbox and extract them in root's home directory:
 * Run Dropbox:
 * Write down or copy that URL as you will need it for the next step.
 * Open another terminal session and launch lynx which is a text-based web browser.
 * Go to URL www.dropbox.com
 * Log in to the Dropbox account. Username is CIS790Capstone and password is the root password.
 * After you have logged in, go to the URL that was copied earlier.
 * Scroll down the page until you see a place to enter your password to link the computer to the Dropbox account.
 * Switch back to the terminal session that is running Dropbox. After a few seconds you should get a welcome message.
 * Press Control-C to stop Dropbox.

Next we need to get a script that allows us to use Dropbox as a service. This will be installed in a the bin folder in root's home directory by typing the following: mkdir -p ~/bin wget -O ~/bin/dropbox.py "http://www.dropbox.com/download?dl=packages/dropbox.py" chmod 755 ~/bin/dropbox.py

Finally we need to relocate the Dropbox folder to the desired backup location.

IT IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT THAT YOU FOLLOW THESE STEPS EXACTLY AND IN THE ORDER NOTED OR ALL THE BACKUP DATA COULD BE LOST ~/bin/dropbox.py stop mv Dropbox /mnt/main/backup ln -s /mnt/main/backup Dropbox ~/bin/dropbox.py start That's it. Dropbox is now installed and running on caesar.
 * Stop Dropbox if it is running by issuing this command:
 * Relocate the Dropbox folder from root's home directory
 * Create a symbolic link in root's home directory to the backup folder in /mnt/main
 * Finally, start the Dropbox service

How to use it
Dropbox is very easy to use once it has been installed. It can be controlled by using the dropbox.py script. To get a list of commands type: ~/bin/dropbox.py help This will output the following: Dropbox command-line interface

commands:

Note: use dropbox help to view usage for a specific command.

status      get current status of the dropboxd help        provide help puburl      get public url of a file in your dropbox stop        stop dropboxd running     return whether dropbox is running start       start dropboxd filestatus  get current sync status of one or more files ls          list directory contents with current sync status autostart   automatically start dropbox at login exclude     ignores/excludes a directory from syncing lansync     enables or disables LAN sync To start dropbox simply type the following as root: ~/bin/dropbox.py start Dropbox will now run in the background until next reboot. To backup data, simply copy files to the /mnt/main/backup folder. Dropbox will sync the files in the background.