getting-started.md

Getting Started

All official dar-backup releases from v2-beta-0.6.18 are signed with GPG — see the GPG signing key section.

1 - installation

Install as shown in the TL;DR or Quick Guide.

A handy alias to activate the venv and launch dar-backup in one step:

grep -qxF 'alias db="' ~/.bashrc \
  || echo 'alias db=". ~/tmp/venv/bin/activate; dar-backup -v"' >> ~/.bashrc

source ~/.bashrc

Typing db at the command line gives something like this:

(venv) user@machine:~$ db
dar-backup 1.1.2
...

2 - configuration

The dar-backup installer application sets up the needed directories for dar-backup to work. It creates necessary directories as prescribed in the config file and optionally creates manager databases. It can also configure shell auto completion.

1. Create a config file — see details on config file

2. Create one or more backup definitions — see details on backup definitions

3. Run the installer:

installer --config <path to dar-backup.conf> --install-autocompletion

3 - generate catalog databases

Generate the archive catalog database(s).

dar-backup expects the catalog databases to be in place — it does not create them automatically (by design).

manager --create-db

4 - give dar-backup a spin

You are now ready to do backups as configured in your backup definition(s).

dar-backup --full-backup --verbose

# list backups
dar-backup --list

# list contents of a dar backup
dar-backup --list-contents <TAB>... <choose a backup>

# see some examples on usage
dar-backup --examples

# see the log file
cat "$HOME/dar-backup/dar-backup.log"

If you want to see dar-backup's log entries in the terminal, use the --log-stdout option.

If you want more log messages, use --verbose or --log-level debug for even more.

To back up a single backup definition:

dar-backup --full-backup -d <your backup definition>

When done, deactivate the venv with deactivate.