Backups internals & operations

Off-site backup on a BOA host is a Duplicity-driven subsystem with three distinct orchestrators, each with its own config tree, bucket-name scheme, and license gate. This section documents the live interface — the scripts under /opt/local/bin, the config trees they read, and the cron paths that fire them — not a generic "how to back up" walkthrough.

The three orchestrators:

  • multiback — the current root-side engine. Eleven backend keys across nine providers, per-path-set config under /root/.remote_backups/, encryption passphrase from .secret.txt, license-gated (_tRee set to pro or dev) via _verify_boa_keys. Installed and wired by dcysetup.
  • mybackup — the tenant-facing front of multiback. Restore-only from the lshell side; scheduled backups for tenants are driven by the same root cron path, not by the tenant.
  • backboa / duobackboa — the older single-bucket AWS-S3 tools, configured inline through _AWS_* variables. They ship and run on every host (no license gate) and remain on the static cron.d crontab. Treat them as the legacy path; new hosts use the multiback/dcysetup suite.

mysql_backup.sh (the nightly per-DB mydumper/mysqldump local dump under /data/disk/arch/sql/) is the local-restore layer that the off-site tools archive on top of — covered in Database and cross-linked where the include/exclude sets reference it.

Pages

  • Overview & architecture — the three orchestrators, the Duplicity layer, what each tool actually captures, the license gate, and the mysqldump/rsync 755 failure mode.
  • multiback operations — dcysetup install + setup, the /root/.remote_backups/ config tree, credential and secret files, the paths.txt _SOURCE/_INCLUDE_PATHS/_EXCLUDE_PATHS variables, the interval cron, and how secrets reach Duplicity.
  • Retention — KEEP_WITHIN and FULL_BACKUP_FREQUENCY validation/ranges/defaults, the time-based cleanup path, and the destructive purge distinction.
  • Regions & buckets — deterministic bucket-name construction, per-backend target-URL forms, which providers need a bucket created by hand, and connectivity testing.
  • CLI reference — exact verb dispatch and argument order for multiback, mybackup, duobackboa, and backboa, plus the per-bucket log paths.
  • Legacy backboa — the _AWS_* interface, the daily-boa-<host> bucket, singular include/exclude files, the randomised full-backup-day toggle, and the retrieve cross-host restore.

See the Reference appendix for the consolidated variable and command tables, and Discontinued features for tools dropped from the suite.