Your Main Backup and Replication Data Are Gone

Without replication what would happen if your Ahsay OBS user partition became corrupted?

The following options are preventative. They don't save your data, but they do enable you to recover all users and profiles; thus, allowing all client to perform a full backup immediately.

Just a thought!

#/bin/bash
#Author: Jim Robinson
#Date: 3 Dec 2008
#Contact: www.PeakBackup.com
#
#Description: Backup all user db information to include reports

filename=`date +%d%m%Y-%H:%M`

find /path/to/a/directory/ \
/path/to/another/directory2/ \
/path/to/another/diretory3 \
-name db -maxdepth 2 -type d | zip -rp $filename.zip -@

-----------------------------------------------------------------

#/bin/bash
#Author: Jim Robinson
#Date: 3 Dec 2008
#Contact: www.PeakBackup.com
#
#Description: Backup user login and backup set information only

filename=`date +%d%m%Y-%H:%M`

find /path/to/a/directory/ \
/path/to/another/directory2/ \
/path/to/another/diretory3 \
-name Profile.xml -maxdepth 3 -type f | zip -rp $filename.zip -@

Ahsay End of Year Sale

Through December 2008, Peak Backup is honoring Ahsay's 40% more sale for items on our shopping cart, http://shop.peakbackup.com.

Ahsay Year-End Sale. 40% more with your purchase is honored at Peak Backup. Applies to SOHO, All-in-one; ACB 50 or greater; If All-in-one, licenses count is increased by 40%, however mailbox count is not. Offer does not apply to Mailbox Add-On.

Recover the Administrator Login for Ahsay OBS

To recover the Ahsay OBS administrator login....

--Change directories to OBS HOME/conf

--Copy obs.xml to date.obs.xml (just in case)

--Edit obs.xml

--About two lines down you'll see the user/password/hashed for the system login. IE:
----user="system" password="T21egV9cwUi2neWVIDgytQ==" hashed-pwd="Y"

--Change the password to a temp plain text password, then change hashed to N. IE:
----user="system" password="changme" hashed-pwd="N"

--Restart OBS

Now you can login to OBS using system/changeme.

--Reset the administrator password, and it will be converted in the obs.xml to hashed again.


Note: This post does not address encryption keys on a backup set. If you ever lose the encryption key for a backup set, you're in trouble.

Linux Commandline Restart Ahsay OBS

So, much for montly postings. Here's a good one.

Here's a very quick way to restart Ahsay's OBS cleanly and without impacting backup clients. The software client will reconnect (much like a network bump).

1. First line is #!/bin/bash
2. Place contents in a filed called "restartAhsay.bash"
3. #chmod 700 restartAhsay.bash
4. Restart! #./restartAhsay.bash

#!/bin/bash

echo `date` >> /root/restartLog.txt
echo "Stopping OBS" >> /root/restartLog.txt
nice -19 service obs stop

sleep 2

pid=`ps -ef |grep obs |grep -v grep | awk '{ print $2 }'`
if [ $pid ]; then
kill -9 $pid
fi

nohup nice -19 service obs start

echo `date` >> /root/restartLog.txt
echo "OBS Started" >> /root/restartLog.txt
echo >> /root/restartLog.txt

echo "OBS Server Restarted at `date`" mail -s "Peak Backup OBS Restart Status" e-mail@peakbackup.com

Our 5th Full Page Ad in Smart Computing for 2008

What is Ahsay Backup Software Service Provider Edition? An easy, secure, and brandable backup software that enables you to start a profitable online backup business.



Peak Backup is an Ahsay Authorized Reseller and has helped companies since 2004 with purchasing Ahsay software and providing startup support to include: data center storage hosting, website design, and Ahsay API integration.



Ahsay is the leader in online backup software that allows you to fully brand the software into your own label while enabling total data protection and disaster recovery solutions for your customers. Ahsay Systems Corporation has been developing reliable and stable online backup software since early 2001. Their software is used by over 1,900 service providers and 700,000 users.



How It Works

· Purchase Ahsay software from Peak Backup
· Install on a main server
· Customize installers and reports to your company name
· Install client software on thousands of computers
· Bill your clients using Ahsay’s billing module or API

Features & Benefits

· Simple and secure
· Incremental backup
· Continuous data protection
· OS support: Windows, Linux, Mac, NetWare, and NAS devices
· Database support: Microsoft Exchange Server and SQL Server, Lotus Notes/Domino, Oracle, and MySQL

Application Sales Changes

As of 5/1/2008, Peak Backup LLC has restructured what products we offer for Ahsay. We now offer:

AHSAY
--OEM
--Standard

We no longer offer:
--A-la-carte
--Business Edition
--Leasing

Why? OEM and Standard sales fit 95% of the business models that exist. Offering more product has introduced confusion and unwarranted sales delay.

PEAK BACKUP LLC

We have dropped the Reseller API price from $999 to $499.

You can view all pricing at http://shop.peakbackup.com

Advertising

Check out the March 2008 issue of Smart Computing. We have the entire back cover! There is also a "redeem code" there for an extra $25 off our already discounted Ahsay prices.

Linux Plesk Backup

This is a continuation of our Linux command line backup blog post from January 2008.

Plesk has its own set of utilities for backup. So, simply run a pre-command with Ahsay's OBM client, backup the Plesk native file(s), and you're done.

Here's what to do:

#mkdir /pleskbackup

In the backup set, run this pre-command without the quotes:
"/usr/local/psa/bin/pleskbackup all /pleskbackup/pleskbackup"

In the backup set, you only need to backup this directory without the quotes:
"/pleskbackup"

NOTES:
--You don't need to enable in-file delta. The way Plesk writes the file causes 80-100% of the file to change. So, every backup will be a full backup.
--Backing up Plesk this way enables a full backup of files; customers; databases; spam settings; and so on. It's very comprehensive
--Read more on pleskbackup command if you need to backup a single account versus the entire server.
--We do not keep the Ahsay service running on any command line Linux server. We recommend running from crontab.

Linux Server Causing Missed Backups

Some time back we had missed backup sets being sent out. Turns out the timezone on the Linux OBS was wrong. This could be the case for any OS server. Below is the quick timezone fix for linux:

--identify tmizone location from /usr/share/zoneinfo
--copy this file to /etc/localtime (replacing the file there) - that's it
--example, #cp -f /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Vienna /etc/localtime

Another way if you're lucky: #system-config-date

This will make your online backup software reporting more reliable--with the correct timezone.

OBM Client and Command Line Linux

Here are some nice to knows about running online backup software, Ahsay's OBM, client on a linux machine without X (GUI/Desktop). All actions are performed as user with root-level access below.


1. Create the backup account on OBS (backup server). Encryption key will be set later in this guide.
2. Create a backup set using the web console. Be sure to minimally fill out:
--Name
--Type
--Backup Source
--Backup Schedule
--"Run scheduled backup on computers named" ________ (use #hostname on the linux machine if you don't know the name)
--Retention Customization Policy
--After clicking update, click back on backup set to ensure everything is as you expect.


Staging
1. Place the install tar.gz on the linux machine
IE, #wget http://IPofOBS/obs/download/obm-nix.tar.gz where OBS is the main backup server.

Extract Install Files
1. #mkdir /usr/local/obm
2. #cd /usr/local/obmgunzip obm-nix.tar.gz
3. #tar -xf obm-nix.tar

Install
1. #./bin/install.sh >install.log
2. Look for any install issues #cat install.log
3. Ensure obm is now running. Should be output from: # ps -ef grep obm

Start Configurator to Associate Backup Account with Linux Machine
1. #sh /usr/local/obm/bin/Configurator.sh

NOTE: If you receive any java heap errors, the application is trying to use more physical memory than you have available.

HEAP Workaround: #cd /usr/local/obm/bin Use vi or whatever you like to replace Xmx512m or Xmx256m in both Configurator.sh and RunBackupSet.sh (only one entry in each). We've used Xmx32m in both files and it works fine.

2)
Login Name: username (account name that you created in the console)
Password: ******************* (password of account name)
Backup Server URL: backup.ahsaypro.com (for example)
Which Protocol ? (1) Http (2) Https : 2 (use https, ssl, unless there's a good reason not to)
Use proxy ? (Y)es or (N)o : N NOTE: if you enter N, the following will not show
Proxy Type ? (1) Http/Https Proxy (2) SOCKS : 1
Enter proxy server : aaa.bbb.comEnter proxy port : xxx
Enter proxy username (optional) : administrator
Enter proxy password (optional) : *******************

Encryption and Running on Computer

Found new backup set 'xxx' where xxx is the name of your backup set
Please enter the following values for this backup set:

Encrypting Algorithm ?(1) Twofish (2) AES (3) Triple DES (4) No encryption : 2 (personal preference)
Encrypting Key: *******************
Re-Enter Encrypting Key: ******************* NOTE: Never forget this password! Encrypting Mode ? (1) ECB (2) CBC : 1 (personal preference)
Run scheduled backup on this computer ? (Y)es or (N)o : Y NOTE: If you select N, the backup set will not run on a schedule on this computer.

Optional Running Backup Set

You don't have to run this now; however, it'll get your data protected now, and it'll prove all above worked.

# sh /usr/local/obm/bin/RunBackupSet.sh [BACKUP_SET]
where [BACKUP_SET] is the name of backup set to be run. IE, if you created BackupSet-0:

#sh /usr/local/obm/bin/RunBackupSet.sh BackupSet-0

Stopping and Starting Processes

If you need to manually stop / start process, create an executable file name.

Stop

#cat stop.sh
sh "/etc/init.d/obmscheduler" stop
sh "/etc/init.d/obmaua" stop

Start
#cat start.sh
sh "/etc/init.d/obmscheduler" start &
sh "/etc/init.d/obmaua" start &

------------------------------------------

If you don't want to use resources with leaving the scheduler running, use native cron in linux:

#crontab -e
0 0 * * * /usr/local/obm/bin/RunBackupSet.sh BackupSet-0

where first five entries are
minute
hour
day
month
week of year

and BackupSet-0 is the name of your backup set.