February 24, 201412 yr As you may or may not know, I've provided a few VM imgs ready to get people going in the Xen world. However one problem keeps popping up, people want a simple way to backup their app configurations within the VM. For example, my Arch VM installs sabnzbd to /opt. What I think would be really useful is if someone could write a simple tool, command line is fine, to find the files per app which constitute its configuration. sabnzbd.INI in this case, and back them up to the unraid array from within the VM. But also an easy way to restore those configuration files after VM reinstall. I guess one a basic script is hashed out with a framework to add different apps into its layout we could possibly look at adding a webGUI? It could be written in any language as it's aimed at running on a VM which usually has a package manager and isn't as tricky to develop for as unraid. I can help someone once a bare bones skeleton is made but starting from scratch isn't my forte with coding! Good luck! Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk
February 25, 201412 yr Off the top of my head... * Are config files in a predicable location? * How often would they need to be backed up? * At what point exactly during the process do they need to be restored? * Would this application have a config file of it's own to specify config locations/backup location/frequency/etc? * Should a user be able to back up and restore a single config, or all at once?
February 25, 201412 yr Author Hi Nic, Was hoping you'd see this! I think the points you raise are all good because they show that the script needs to rely on variables almost entirely rather than fixed paths. This is definitely true in order to make the app omni-OS. All of my examples below are for Arch, but the files remain the same for each app - only the path changes per OS / user preference. * Are config files in a predicable location? Yes, usually. For example with SABnzbd it always places it's .ini file in it's data directory (which usually happens to be the app root unless the user specficially chose to install it a different way). I'm not an expert but would 'find /insertdir -name sabnzbd.ini' work in some kind of for loop? * How often would they need to be backed up? One time deal per app I would have thought. The config for the apps themselves will rarely change beyond initial config, and if they just rerun the script. * At what point exactly during the process do they need to be restored? I would imagine this makes the most sense before the user has run their newly installed application on a fresh install of a VM. * Would this application have a config file of it's own to specify config locations/backup location/frequency/etc? If that's the easiest way to do it, then yes. * Should a user be able to back up and restore a single config, or all at once? I'm thinking checkbox style if it detects multiple apps backed up configs? Or something like I've detected config files for the following apps, select the configs to be restored: Sabnzbd [ * ] Sickbeard [ ] .....
February 25, 201412 yr Until a more elegant solution will be available can't one just backup the VM.img file?
February 25, 201412 yr Author @soana that misses the point entirely. But yes, one could. Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk
February 25, 201412 yr Author Ish, but the I'm only a basic java programming and when I say basic I mean I did what they taught me a uni last semester. I need tog et my head around version management this term anyway so this could be a fun project to crack on with. What language are you aiming at?? And how would a user run it? Command line? Bring it on, i like learning, especially good techniques as I'll be interviewing for lots of jobs very soon. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
February 25, 201412 yr Ish, but the I'm only a basic java programming and when I say basic I mean I did what they taught me a uni last semester. I need tog et my head around version management this term anyway so this could be a fun project to crack on with. What language are you aiming at?? And how would a user run it? Command line? Bring it on, i like learning, especially good techniques as I'll be interviewing for lots of jobs very soon. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Yeah CLI. See the first section under API for example usage (I probably named that poorly now that I think about it). I'm thinking Python. Light weight, easy to maintain, easy to test (reduce bugs and improve reliability). I've initialized a repo (https://github.com/nicinabox/configs-backup), but haven't committed anything yet. I'm happy to pair on it if you like!
February 25, 201412 yr Oh yeah, is this going be be run on the VM and backed up to a place in unraid? Or run in unraid, look at the VM, and back up to unraid, or something else?
February 25, 201412 yr Author I'm not so good at coding from scratch yet but can help if there's a skeleton in place. Don't know python so let's learn that. I'm happy to pair, even if you do most of the work! I'll help where I can. The script will run on the VM and backup to somewhere, could be unraid mounted via cifs or whatever. Doesn't matter, it'll be configurable. Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk
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