Linux Agent

The Linux Agent is client side software that creates and transfers image-based backups of the block devices on a Linux machine.

Table of Contents

• Project Overview
• System Requirements
• Build & Installation Instructions
• Usage
• How to Submit a Bug Report
• How Does It Work?

Project Overview

The intention of this project is to create a general purpose tool to perform image based backups of Linux machines.

System Requirements

• Kernel version 2.6.32+
• Filesystem is ext4, ext3, ext2, or xfs

Build & Installation Instructions

• All
  • Remember to git submodule init && git submodule update to get the submodule projects
• Debian-based (e.g. Ubuntu, Mint)
  • You can build the package from linux-agent-deb, or just ./install_deps to get the dependencies and ./one_step_build to build it.
• Red-Hat based
  • Packages soon! But not yet. So follow the other directions for now.
• Other
  • You will need to go through the install_deps script and install the files needed using whatever your package manager is. Then, run ./one_step_build. Let me know and I'll be happy to help with this.

Usage

• Starting the daemon
  • If you installed from the package, it is probably already running. Otherwise, just type dattod.
  • If you built from source, do ./build/dattod
• Requesting a backup
  1. Setup the destination server
     1. Make a sparse file to back the image. On the system to backup, run blockdev --getsize64 /dev/YOUR_BD to get the size in bytes of the block device to backup. Then, copy that number and do truncate --size=SIZE_OF_BD block_dev.datto on the destination system.
     2. Start nbd-server on the destination system. nbd-server 12345 $(readlink -f block_dev.datto) to start it on port 12345
  2. Get the UUID of the block device to backup by running blkid and copying it out.
  3. Request a backup with ./build/dattocli startbackup --full --vector UUID_FROM_BLKID DESTINATION_HOST 12345

How to Submit a Bug Report

• Submit it as an issue on GitHub: https://github.com/datto/linux-agent/issues/new
  • If you aren't sure if something is a bug, report it anyway! Rather have too many than too few.

How Does It Work?

• http://datto.github.io/linux_agent.pdf