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Hi Daniel, Thank you for your reply and your advice. Seems I've managed to get further than I thought..:) I already have the keyfile and have stored it under /root/ as specified by the configuration file. I'll run 'tarsnap --fsck' to create the cache directory and see how it goes from there. Thanks again - much appreciated. Regards, John ## On 12-02-2014 19:17, Daniel Staal wrote: --As of February 12, 2014 6:54:01 PM +0000, jg5 is alleged to have said:1). On the Tarsnap general usage page, can anyone please tell me what the following means: "The examples here assume that you are using a Tarsnap configuration file including keyfile and cachedir directives." What are 'keyfile and cachedir directives'? Are they simply instructions to the operating system to put the keyfile and cache directory in specific locations?Close - they are instructions to *tarsnap* on where the files are. They look something like this (from my tarsnap.conf file, on FreeBSD): ~~~ # Tarsnap cache directory cachedir /usr/local/tarsnap-cache # Tarsnap key file keyfile /root/tarsnap.key ~~~ If you haven't run tarsnap yet, they may not exist. This is generally ok. (At this point.)2). I don't appear to have the /usr/local/tarsnap-cache directory. Can anyone suggest what might have happened and what I should do about it? Does this mean that Tarsnap hasn't installed properly? Should I re-install? Or should I just run 'tarsnap --fsck'?It probably means the installer didn't create it, for whatever reason. (After all, you might want it someplace else, or a package manager could have created it someplace else for you.) You could create it manually, or run `tarsnap --fsck`.3). Can anyone point me to a step-by-step guide - online article, whatever - on how to use Tarsnap? I think it's a great idea, and I need to sort out a backup system, but am wondering if it's maybe a bit over my head. Thought I would ask on this forum to see if things become clearer before calling it a day.If you have gotten this far, and have a keyfile, you are almost done. It's simpler than it sounds. (If you *don't* have a keyfile, run `tarsnap-keygen --keyfile $KEY_LOCATION --user $USERNAME --machine $MACHINENAME`, where $KEY_LOCATION is the location you want the keyfile to be (whatever you've got in your tarsnap.conf, $USERNAME is whatever you signed on to the tarsnap site with, and $MACHINENAME is whatever you want to call this machine.) Then make sure you have the tarsnap-cache directory (see above), and you are set up. The only thing left is to actually create the backups. That's done using something like this: tarsnap -cf $BACKUPNAME /your/backed/up/directory Where $BACKUPNAME is whatever you want to call that backup - I usually use something like 'settings-`date +\%F`', which will automatically add the current date to the name. (Check your man pages - `date` is standard, but it's options aren't...) The man pages describe other options. (I like `--humanize-numbers` personally.) To get that backup back, you need the command: tarsnap -xf $BACKUPNAME Where $BACKUPNAME is the name of the backup you want to retrieve - as specified in the create command. (`-c` is create, `-x` is extract. `-f` is the name of the 'backup file', even though there is no actual 'file'; it's using the same syntax as tar.) Again, check the man pages for other options and details on exactly what that will do. Hope that helps, and was a bit clearer. ;) Daniel T. Staal --------------------------------------------------------------- This email copyright the author. Unless otherwise noted, you are expressly allowed to retransmit, quote, or otherwise use the contents for non-commercial purposes. This copyright will expire 5 years after the author's death, or in 30 years, whichever is longer, unless such a period is in excess of local copyright law. ---------------------------------------------------------------
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