RIBS (Rsync Incremental Backup Script)

RIBS is an incremental backup system written in PHP which utilizes some common *nix programs (specifically rsync, ssh and cp). Incremental backups mean frequent backups can be done (i.e. hourly) with only around 2x the space of the full backup. Using rsync means that RIBS can act as both a backup script on a local machine, or as a script to backup several network hosts. It is designed to be highly configurable and highly informative to the system administrator. There is a high amount of error checking, and logging/email capabilities.

Price:

All of my scripts are open source, and therefore free!. Of course contributions in the form of documentation, patches or wishlist items are always welcome. In addition, if you need help then you can hire me to install, modify, or improve the scripts. Head over to my consulting website to contact me.

Downloads: 06-23-2006: RIBS 2.3 (Download it or Download the patch to upgrade from 2.2) Several people have contributed code or ideas: Now works correctly when only backing directories up once a day (limit => 1), Backup directories and exclude directories can now contain spaces.

Help: Please don't contact me directly for help with the script (unless you're looking for paid consulting). Rather, use the group below.

	Announcements, Help, and Discussion for RIBS:
	Email:
	Browse Archives at groups.google.com

Quick Usage Explanation:

For those in a hurry or just wanting to test out the script, the below commands should get you up and going:

• Download the latest version of RIBS
• tar -xzvf ribs-x.x.tar.gz
• cd ribs-x.x
• ./ribs.php example hourly

Detailed Usage Explanation:

There is a lot more RIBS can do: directories and files can be excluded based on regular expressions, different hosts can have different backup configurations, you can do non-incremental backups (useful on windows hosts that do not support hard-links), etc. For all of that and more you should peruse the README.

Requirements:

• rsync - http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/
• cp & rm - http://www.gnu.org/software/fileutils/fileutils.html
• PHP - http://www.php.net/
• basic PEAR libraries (as of version 1.1) - http://pear.php.net/ PEAR's Console_Getopt-1.0 package. This comes with PEAR, but many people have version 0.11 which won't work. Get it here

Docs:

• README
• CHANGES
• LICENSE
• SVN (akin to CVS) repository

License:

The script under the PHP license, and thus is free for you to use and modify as you wish, just let me know if you make any improvements.

Credits:

• Thanks to Mike Rubel for his excellent paper and sample code...
• Thanks to Greg Lawler for the first BASH version