I’ve just write a brand new script called system-backup.py. It’s similar to my website-backup.py script but instead of website and MySQL databases, it is designed to backup systems of several machines. This script is based on an idea from the “Backup up on unreliable link” article from the official rdiff-backup wiki. It use rdiff-backup to keep the last 20 backups and rsync to speed-up the backup process.

I run this script to backup all the local machines within my LAN. I start the backup process everyday thanks to a cron entry similar to this one:

0 20 * * * root /root/system-backup.py >> /mnt/backup-disk/backup.log

If you need more information about the rsync part the script, please have a look to my previous Remote Backup with rsync article, which detail how-to setup key authentification with ssh.