Back up the config via script?

[jonf]

I've been looking into ways in which I could schedule a backup of the TrueNAS config with a script. Looking into the tar file I got manually from the server (including the secret seed) I see the files in question, which I discovered are stored in the /data directory in TrueNAS. At first I thought, in theory, I could just use the tar command to create a new archive containing both files and use some of the steps here to upload it to Google Drive. However, on closer inspection of the tar file in 7-Zip, I noticed there's a couple of directories called "." with files inside called "@PaxHeader".

What are these? Where do they come from? Are these essential for TrueNAS to recognise the tar file as a proper config to be restored via the GUI, or will it work without them?

 

[Samuel Tai]

PaxHeaders in tarball

I'm doing a tar like in C, and I've got a problem. I just want to archive and unarchive files and diretories, so I operate this command: tar -cvf NAME.tar FILE1 [FILE2...] Now I'm trying to get the

stackoverflow.com

This is an extension to the TAR specification. Leave them alone.

 

[Samuel Tai]

Also, forum search is your friend.

A script to backup configuration file when changed

I saw cyberjock's post for backing up the config file every night but my config does not change often enough to back it up daily so I thought to my self that it would be nice if freenas had a feature to backup the config to a location of my choice when I made a change. So I wrote this python...

www.truenas.com

 

[jonf]

Also, forum search is your friend.

A script to backup configuration file when changed

I saw cyberjock's post for backing up the config file every night but my config does not change often enough to back it up daily so I thought to my self that it would be nice if freenas had a feature to backup the config to a location of my choice when I made a change. So I wrote this python...

www.truenas.com

Interesting. This didn't come up in my original search, I'll try it out tomorrow. Thanks.

 

[jonf]

OK on closer inspection of that script it looks like it copies the 'freenas-v1.db' file into a temp directory on the system drive and writes a log in the same location to say what happened. I was hoping it would also copy the 'pwenc_secret' file but I don't see any reference to it in the script. I don't know really Python so I wouldn't know how to add that file to the process (at least without breaking something ).

 

[jonf]

I've just done some further testing with TrueNAS in VirtualBox. I created two virtual machines onto which I would install TrueNAS; the first machine was configured manually once I installed TrueNAS, after which I then ran the following command in the console from the /data directory:

tar -cvf test.tar freenas-v1.db pwenc_secret

I pulled the tar file onto my desktop via Filezilla. I then installed TrueNAS onto the second VM and configured the network settings in the console before going into the web GUI. From there I uploaded my tar file as the config to be restored, after which it rebooted a couple of times and seemed to work without any apparent ill effects.

I think this will make it easier in the future to create a tar (which I can then sync to the cloud using Cloud Credentials to keep it off the server itself) that I can simply upload via the web GUI in order to restore my config if/when needed, rather than manually copying the files via SFTP or something. Unless the @PaxHeader files added to the tar by the web GUI process include extra hidden data that TrueNAS might need for later?