Creating full backups¶

The Plixer Scrutinizer filesystem includes the backup.sh utility, which automates the creation of full backups. This script is located under home/plixer/scrutinizer/files.

Important

The license key (if the instance is a primary Reporter), as well as the the TLS certificates and keys generated by Plixer Scrutinizer, are not backed up and cannot be restored.

The following instructions cover the process of creating and saving full Plixer Scrutinizer instance backups to a specified remote host:

Note

It is also possible to save backups locally on the same Plixer Scrutinizer instance. However, due to the size of full backup files, this will limit the amount of storage available for system functions and is not recommended.

SSH to the Plixer Scrutinizer server to be backed up and start a tmux session to prevent timeouts:
```
tmux new -s backup
```

Install sshfs and allow others to use FUSE mounts

sudo yum -y install sshfs

sudo grep -Eq "^user_allow_other" /etc/fuse.conf || \
sudo sed -i '$ a user_allow_other' /etc/fuse.conf

Create the backup directory locally and mount the remote directory.

BACKUPDIR=/mnt/backup

sudo mkdir -p $BACKUPDIR
sudo chown plixer:plixer $BACKUPDIR

sshfs -o allow_other -o reconnect REMOTE_USER@REMOTE_HOST:REMOTE_DIRECTORY $BACKUPDIR

Run backup.sh as the plixer user, with the mounted remote directory set as the backup file location.
```
BACKUPDIR=/mnt/backup ~plixer/scrutinizer/files/backup.sh
```
Important

Before running the backup utility, verify that the remote directory to be used is empty and there is sufficient storage available. For a rough estimate of the backup file size, run the command df -h /var/db | awk '!/^Filesystem/ {print "Space Required: "$3}' on the Plixer Scrutinizer instance.
Once the script confirms that the backup file has been saved, unmount the remote backup directory.
```
BACKUPDIR=/mnt/backup
fusermount -u $BACKUPDIR
sudo rmdir $BACKUPDIR
```

Full backup files are created as scrutinizer-VERSION-backup-DATE.tar.gz at the specified location and owned by the plixer user.

Hint

Full backup files can also be saved to a separate Plixer Scrutinizer instance, provided it has sufficient disk space available and is running the same Plixer Scrutinizer version as the instance to be backed up. However, doing so is only recommended for instances that have been deployed for redundancy. For further details, contact Plixer Technical Support.