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I want to use rsnapshot to make backups from my production server to a remote backups server.

Should I install rsnapshot on the remote backup server and not the production one, right ?

rsnapshot is going to pull the files to backup from the production server and store them locally on the backup server ?

I've just realized that I don't have sudo privilegies on the backup server. Does this mean I cannot use rsnapshot for remote backups ?

By the way, isn't a pity I can't use rsnapshot with a backup space service offered by my hosting provider, just because I have not full control on the backup server, but only on the production one ?

2 Answers 2

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You can run rsnapshot as any user. You will need to copy the /etc/rsnapshot.conf file to somewhere that you can edit it eg ~/rsnapshot/ . You will need to change the lockfile directive as you most likely wont be able to write to write to it's default as a standard user.

lockfile        /home/patrick/rsnapshot/rsnapshot.pid

You then invoke rsnapshot thus

rsnapshot -c /home/patrick/rsnapshot/rsnapshot.conf hourly

Do you have access to cron as a standard user on the server ?

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  • Yeah.. and I cannot install rsnapshot using apt-get install but I should compile it I guess.. and some other stuff.. I'm not convinced... I'm afraid I'm going to have permissions issues later...
    – aneuryzm
    Jan 9, 2011 at 9:50
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    @Patrick: I tested my answer and it works fine as a non privileged user.
    – user1192
    Jan 9, 2011 at 9:57
  • I've just downoaded rsnapshot (with wget) into my backup server and I cannot even uncompress it because it doesn't have "x" privilegies (only rw for root user).
    – aneuryzm
    Jan 9, 2011 at 11:44
  • Also.. strange, I can delete it, but I'm not root user.. if I use sudo it says I'm not in the sudoers list.
    – aneuryzm
    Jan 9, 2011 at 11:44
  • And I don't have access to crontab -e. So end of the story I guess.
    – aneuryzm
    Jan 9, 2011 at 11:50
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You'll have to cron the rsnapshot job on the backup server, as well as set up a remote connection to the production server in order to pull the relevant data. If you can perform these jobs without sudo (perhaps a portal service like cPanel?), then rsnapshot is still viable.

Without any way to cron the rsnapshot jobs, you'll be out of luck.

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  • Indeed I don't have access to crontab -e. I don't have control panel: it is basically backup space provided by my hosting service, it is not part of my VPS.
    – aneuryzm
    Jan 9, 2011 at 11:51

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