I use rsync.net for offsite backups with history (extended to 21 days of snapshots). The simple way to use it would be to have a single ssh key without a passphrase that all machines backing up use, and run rsync once for each directory being backed up. I didn’t take that approach because that single ssh key would give access to all our backups if one of our laptops was stolen; instead I figured out my requirements and wrote tooling wrapping rsync.

Requirements Link to heading

I had several requirements:

  1. Use a different ssh key for every (machine, directory) pair being backed up. Ssh keys must allow making backups but not allow retrieving files, so that an attacker obtaining the ssh key could delete/overwrite a backup but not steal data. Daily snapshots on rsync.net mean that an attacker can’t cause significant data loss - at most up to one day of new data will be lost.
  2. Run hourly from cron. Flaky networks, files being changed while the backup is ongoing, and laptops going asleep will all cause failures - I need to suppress common error messages or I’ll be flooded with warning mails like rsync warning: some files vanished before they could be transferred. Notifications like that are just noise, and train the recipient (me) to ignore them, so sooner or later I would ignore a useful notification.
  3. Tracking the time of the last successful backup for each machine so I can detect if backups are consistently failing anywhere. Reporting stale backups needs to be configurable on a per-machine basis: there’s no point in alerting every day for a laptop that’s asleep at home while we’re travelling, or for a work laptop that won’t be backing up over the weekend.
  4. Easy setup because I have N*M (machine, directory) pairs to setup.
  5. Per-directory exclusions because there will be files that don’t need to be backed up.

Implementation of backups Link to heading

Most requirements are implemented in the backup-to-rsync-net-lib library, which is used by backup-single-directory-to-rsync-net to backup a single directory, and that in turn is called once per directory to be backed by per-machine backup programs like backup-johntobin-laptop-to-rsync-net. When run interactively they output progress information, but when run non-interactively they are silent unless an interesting error occurs, so they can be run from cron.

  • All the code references rsync-net rather than rsync.net, so the actual hostname is specified in ~/.ssh/config along with any other configuration.

  • It uses per-source ssh keys, based on supplied hostname and destination directory - these are hard-coded in the per-machine backup programs. The hostnames are hard-coded because I don’t want them to change as laptops move across networks. The backup will be placed in hostname/destination-directory/ on rsync.net; there is no protection against hostname clashes between source machines or clashes between destination directories for a single source machine.

  • To make setup easier, the --make-keys-only flag skips backing up and creates any missing keys using ssh-keygen and prints the necessary lines for authorized_keys on rsync.net; example output is shown below (note that it’s wrapped here so you can easily read it).

    Missing SSH key :( SourceDirectory
    command="rsync --server -vlogDtpre.iLsfxC \
      --delete --partial-dir=.rsync-partial \
      . johntobin-laptop/DestinationDirectory",\
      no-pty,no-agent-forwarding,no-port-forwarding PUB_KEY
    

    The exception to this is the key for updating the sentinel files tracking successful backups (described below) is not created because it’s shared across all machines, so it needs to be copied into place manually.

  • The command specified in authorized_keys on rsync.net sets rsync up to receive files rather than send files, so attackers can’t retrieve files using the ssh key. It also specifies the destination directory and all the other arguments necessary. The downside is that changing the arguments for rsync requires changes in both the code and authorized_keys files, which is awkward.

  • Filtering error messages is accomplished by piping rsync’s stderr to grep with a long list of patterns to exclude; for details search for Suppress certain error messages in backup-johntobin-laptop-to-rsync-net.

  • rsync supports filters for excluding or including files, and the library uses it twice:

    • --filter=dir-merge,- .gitignore: ignore the same files git does.

    • --filter=dir-merge rsync-net_filters: read filter specifications from files named rsync-net_filters if any are found. Example filter contents:

      # Exclude files that can be regenerated.
      exclude *Previews.lrdata
      # Exclude files broken by Mojave full disk access.
      exclude Photos Library.photoslibrary
      

Implementation of reporting Link to heading

  • Tracking successful backups is accomplished by using backup-update-rsync-net-sentinel to save the current timestamp in a sentinel file in a specific directory on rsync.net; it’s run by the per-machine backup programs if all directories were successfully backed up. There is support for setting the maximum acceptable delay between backups on a per-machine basis with backup-set-max-delay, and for marking a machine as asleep (e.g. because a machine is at home while we’re travelling) using backup-set-sleeping-until, which both use the same code for copying a file to rsync.net as backup-update-rsync-net-sentinel and put the requisite files in the same directory. The files contain seconds since the epoch as a text string, e.g. 1553385602.

  • Reporting on machines that haven’t successfully backed up for too long is handled by backup-check-sentinels-on-rsync-net, which grabs all the sentinel files from rsync.net using the same code that uploads the files, and then runs check_backup_sentinels which handles all the heavy lifting. When run interactively it dumps all the information it has to make debugging easier; otherwise it only outputs warnings about out-of-date backups. backup-check-sentinels-on-rsync-net runs from cron on two different machines every night. The output is fairly simple, e.g. (wrapped for easier reading):

    Backup for "johntobin-laptop" too old:
      current time 1553385602/2019-03-24 00:00;
      last backup 1552953713/2019-03-19 00:01;
      max allowed delay: 172800/1970-01-03 00:00;
      sleeping until: 1541204831/2018-11-03 00:27
    

    The same ssh key is used for all sentinel uploads regardless of source machine or type, because a fixed hostname of update is used and the destination directory is the same. However a different ssh key must be used for sentinel downloads, because authorized_keys specifies the command to run including whether files are being uploaded or downloaded. This is difficult because in the code I wrote the ssh key filename is based on the hostname and destination directory, so I need to change either the hostname or directory when downloading. To do this I use a symlink on rsync.net: update is the directory sentinels are uploaded to; retrieve is a symlink pointing to update and is where sentinels are downloaded from. The code generates a different key filename, and the corresponding line in authorized_keys is set up for files to be retrieved rather than pushed.

Setting up a new machine Link to heading

  • On MacOS you need to install some necessary tools: brew install coreutils lockrun rsync.
    • coreutils provides gtimeout, so that stuck backups will be killed eventually.
    • lockrun ensures that only one backup runs at a time.
    • I use rsync features that aren’t supported by the version shipped by Apple.
  • Add a config stanza to ~/.ssh/config for rsync-net like:
Host rsync-net
    HostName HOSTNAME.rsync.net
    User USERNAME
    ForwardAgent no
    ForwardX11 no
    ControlMaster no
    ControlPath none
  • mkdir -p ~/tmp/locks ~/.ssh/rsync-net

  • Copy the ssh key for updating sentinels (~/.ssh/rsync-net/update_sentinel) from another machine.

  • cp backup-johntobin-laptop-to-rsync-net backup-NEW-MACHINE-to-rsync-net, edit the new file changing the hostname and the directories to backup.

  • ./backup-NEW-MACHINE-to-rsync-net --make-keys-only, copy the lines it outputs to authorized_keys on rsync.net.

  • ./backup-NEW-MACHINE-to-rsync-net; it will fail because the destination directory on rsync.net doesn’t exist, so create the directory manually: ssh rsync-net mkdir -p DIRECTORY

  • ./backup-NEW-MACHINE-to-rsync-net; it should work this time.

  • Run from cron hourly (wrapped for easier reading):

    • MacOS:

      @hourly /usr/local/bin/lockrun --quiet \
        --lockfile="${HOME}/tmp/locks/rsync-net" -- \
          /usr/local/bin/gtimeout --kill-after=60 6h \
            "${HOME}/bin/backup-NEW-MACHINE-to-rsync-net"`
      
    • Linux:

      @hourly flock "${HOME}/tmp/locks/rsync-net" \
        timeout 6h \
          "${HOME}/bin/backup-NEW-MACHINE-to-rsync-net"