USB Full backup

Daily backup to stick

Daily backup of your cores hot keys and operational files to a local or remote usb stick with rsync.

Source Disk Setup

Log in and open a root shell

sudo su

Tail syslog before inserting your drive. This will print some information that can help you identify the disk.

tail -f /var/log/syslog

Attach the external drive and take note of the assigned device node. eg. /dev/sdb

If the target drive is lacking partition tables syslog may not print the device node assignment. fdisk -l however will.

You can also print a list of drives with fdisk.

fdisk -l

Example output:

Disk /dev/sdb: 57.66 GiB, 61907927040 bytes, 120913920 sectors
Disk model: Cruzer
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: EECA81B9-3683-4A59-BC63-02EEDC04FD21

In my case it is /dev/sdb. Yours may be /dev/sdc, /dev/sdd or so on. /dev/sda is usually the system drive. Do not format your system drive by accident.

Baremetal Core

Create an new GUID Partition Table (GPT)

This will wipe the disk

gdisk /dev/sdb

Type ? to list options

Command (? for help): ?
b	back up GPT data to a file
c	change a partition's name
d	delete a partition
i	show detailed information on a partition
l	list known partition types
n	add a new partition
o	create a new empty GUID partition table (GPT)
p	print the partition table
q	quit without saving changes
r	recovery and transformation options (experts only)
s	sort partitions
t	change a partition's type code
v	verify disk
w	write table to disk and exit
x	extra functionality (experts only)
?	print this menu

  1. Enter o for new GPT

  2. Enter n to add a new partition and accept defaults to create a partition that spans the entire disk.

  3. Enter w to write changes to disk and exit gdisk.

Your new partition can be found at /dev/sdb1, the first partition on sdb.

Optionaly Check the drive for bad blocks (takes a couple of hours)

badblocks -c 10240 -s -w -t random -v /dev/sdb

Format the partition as ext4

sudo mkfs.ext4 -n core-backup /dev/sdb1

Make the usb backup drive always available to our backup job. Since it will be holding sensitive data we will mount it in a way where only root and the user cardano-node runs as can access.

Run blkid and pipe it through awk to get the UUID of the filesystem we just created.

sudo blkid /dev/sdb1 | awk -F'"' '{print $4}'

Example output:

55e3346a-a7ba-4b60-bd68-fa8f86b8f8ca

For myself the UUID=55e3346a-a7ba-4b60-bd68-fa8f86b8f8ca

Drop back into your regular users shell.

exit

Add mount entry to the bottom of fstab adding your new partitions UUID and the full system path to your backup folder. For this guide we set the path to a folder we will create in our home directory. /home/username/core-backup

sudo nano /etc/fstab

Replace user with the user cardano-node runs as.

UUID=55e3346a-a7ba-4b60-bd68-fa8f86b8f8ca /home/<user>/core-backup ext4 nosuid,nodev,nofail 0 1

nofail allows the server to boot if the drive is not inserted.

Create the mountpoint & set default ACL for files and folders with umask.

cd; mkdir $HOME/core-backup; umask 022 $HOME/core-backup

Mount the drive.

sudo mount $HOME/core-backup

Take ownership of the filesystem.

sudo chown -R $USER:$USER $HOME/core-backup

Reboot the server and confirm the system mounted the drive at boot.

Remote core to local machine FAT32

Create an new GUID Partition Table (GPT)

This will wipe the disk

sudo gdisk /dev/sdb

Type ? to list options

Command (? for help): ?
b	back up GPT data to a file
c	change a partition's name
d	delete a partition
i	show detailed information on a partition
l	list known partition types
n	add a new partition
o	create a new empty GUID partition table (GPT)
p	print the partition table
q	quit without saving changes
r	recovery and transformation options (experts only)
s	sort partitions
t	change a partition's type code
v	verify disk
w	write table to disk and exit
x	extra functionality (experts only)
?	print this menu

  1. Enter o for new GPT

  2. Enter n to add a new partition and accept defaults to create a partition that spans the entire disk.

  3. Enter w to write changes to disk and exit gdisk.

sudo apt install exfatprogs

sudo mkfs.exfat -n core-backup /dev/sdb1

Set the msftdata data on the exFAT partition (also taken from Thawn's answer). Since we have only one partition, apply the command to partition 1

sudo parted /dev/sdb
set 1 msftdata on
q

Your new partition can be found at /dev/sdb1, the first partition on sdb.

Optionaly Check the drive for bad blocks (takes a couple of hours)

badblocks -c 10240 -s -w -t random -v /dev/sdb

Mount the drive at boot

We want this drive to always be available to our backup job. Since it will be holding sensitive data we will mount it in a way where only root and the user cardano-node runs as can access.

Run blkid and pipe it through awk to get the UUID of the filesystem we just created.

sudo blkid /dev/sdb1 | awk -F'"' '{print $4}'

Example output:

7FFD-F67C

For me the UUID=7FFD-F67C

Drop back into your regular users shell.

exit

Add mount entry to the bottom of fstab adding your new partitions UUID and the full system path to your backup folder. For this guide we set the path to a folder we will create in our home directory. /home/username/core-backup

Identify user id and group id and substitute for in fstab.

id $USER
sudo nano /etc/fstab
UUID=F67F-F095 /home/<user>/core-backup exfat defaults,auto,nofail,uid=<xxx>,gid=<xxx>

nofail allows the server to boot if the drive is not inserted.

Create the mountpoint & set default ACL for files and folders with umask.

cd; mkdir $HOME/core-backup; umask 022 $HOME/core-backup

Scheduled Backups

Backup what you want with Rsync as frequently as you want.

Create a script that will only backup if the drive is mounted.

nano $HOME/core-backup-script.sh
#!/bin/bash

# Local Source
SOURCE="<path to your NODE_HOME>"

# Remote Source
#REMOTE_SOURCE="-i -e "ssh -i $HOME/.ssh/<private key>" <user>@<server name or IP>:$NODE_HOME"

DESTINATION="<Path to your mounted USB stick>"

if grep -qs "$HOME/core-backup" /proc/mounts; then
   echo "Executing Rsync"
   rsync -av --exclude-from="exclude-list.txt" $SOURCE $DESTINATION
else
   echo "Core backup drive is not mounted."
fi
exit 0
chmod +x $HOME/core-backup-script.sh

Create an rsync-exclude.txt file so we can rip through and grab everything we need and skip the rest.

cd; nano exclude-list.txt
.bash_history
.bash_logout
.bashrc
.cache
.config
.local/bin/cardano-node
.local/bin/cardano-service
.profile
.selected_editor
.ssh
.sudo_as_admin_successful
.wget-hsts
git
tmp
pi-pool/db
pi-pool/scripts
pi-pool/logs
usb-transfer
core-backup-script.sh
exclude-list.txt

Setup Cron

Open crontab and add the rule to the bottom.

crontab -e
# Replace with correct path to your pools working directory
#
# run 3am every day
0 3 * * * $HOME/core-backup-script.sh

Optional backup alias with mount check

Create an alias in .bashrc or .adaenv if present for manual alias to backup the core.

cd; nano .bashrc

Add the following at the bottom edit the paths and exclude as you see fit and source the changes.

if grep -qs '$HOME/core-backup ' /proc/mounts; then
    echo "Core backup drive is mounted. Executing Rsync"; alias core-backup="rsync -a --exclude={"db/","scripts/","logs/"} $NODE_HOME $HOME/core-backup/"
else
    echo "Core backup drive is not mounted."
fi
exit 0
source .bashrc

Now if you want to manually backup the hot keys just type core-backup. For example after generating a new KES pair and node.cert

core-backup
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