The Command Line Utility

The Command Line Utility

Below is a list of the available commands for the backup command line utility.

Help

Bring up the available commands with:

$ backup help

Bring up details for a specific command using:

$ backup help <command name>

Check

The check command is used to check your Backup configuration. This command will load your config.rb file, along with all of your model files, and report any Errors or Warnings generated. This allows to you check your configuration files for syntax errors, as well as detecting other errors or warning such as the use of deprecated configuration settings. It is recommended that you run backup check whenever you update backup.

If your config.rb file is not in the default location of ~/Backup/config.rb, use the --config-file argument to specify it's location.

$ backup check --config-file /path/to/config.rb

As a convenience, this check may also be performed by adding the --check option to your backup perform command, in which case the trigger specified will not be performed.

$ backup perform --trigger my_backup --check

The result of this check will be output to the console only. Any Logger configuration will be ignored. If the check is successful, this command will exit with status code 0. If there are any errors/warnings, it will exit with status code 1.

Note that there are certain actions performed during the backup process may generate errors and/or warnings this check can not detect. While this will catch most problems, you should of course use perform to confirm your backup jobs will succeed.

Perform

The perform action is used to run the backup job(s) you have defined in your model files.

To perform a backup model, use:

$ backup perform --trigger my_backup

The trigger identifies the model and is set when it is defined.

# The trigger here is: my_backup
Backup::Model.new(:my_backup, 'Description for my_backup') do
  # etc...
end

To asynchronously perform multiple backup models, provide multiple triggers, each separated by a comma.

$ backup perform --triggers my_backup_1,my_backup_2,my_backup_3

Each trigger will be run in the order specified, one after the other.

See Performing Backups for more information.

Generate

The generate command can be used to generate the main Backup configuration file and new Backup model files.

To generate a new Backup config file (~/Backup/config.rb), use:

$ backup generate:config

To generate a new Backup model file (~/Backup/models/new_trigger.rb), use:

$ backup generate:model --trigger new_trigger [options...]

These files are generated from templates that contain basic configuration information and comments, based on the options you provide, to help you easily setup new backup jobs.

See the Generator page for more information.

Version

Displays the current version of Backup:

$ backup version