That’s good to hear!
Just remember to change the ownership of the folders/files to pi/pi after they’ve been extracted.
For emoncms folders/files - sudo chown -R www-data:root /var/lib/{phpfiwa,phpfina,phptimeseries}
…and for node-red and mysql - sudo chown -R pi:pi your_dir
Paul
PS - I’ve left a little utility to help download the archives from dropbox cloud in dropbox-archive/lib called dropShell.
To run it, ./dropShell.sh from within the lib directory.
You can then cd to backups ls to display your cloud archives
and get an archive, which would then be downloaded to your lib folder.
I would recommend moving the archive to a different directory somewhere to extract it, to keep the ‘lib’ folder clear.
To extract the archive within that directory - sudo tar -zxvf archive_01_07_2016_0030.tar.gz
What about making it into a emoncms module? So users could easily install and trigger backups from the Emoncms interface? What would be required? Do you think there would be demand for such a module?
My original concept was to develop a fit & forget module, which wasn’t reliant on user’s remembering to trigger a backup, it just backed everything up once a night, and weeded old backups, with no user intervention, so if a problem arose then data loss would be minimal.
That’s pretty much where the module is at this time.
With a little work I’m sure it’s viable.
It would be good to be able to be able to get it’s configuration from the emoncms settings.php, so there would be no duplicity - mysql database settings, file paths, etc. making installation quicker and avoiding errors.
There hasn’t been that much interest so far TBH. Maybe now you’ve almost eradicated SD card failures, data loss is not perceived to be a priority issue…
@Dave if you wish to also back up your emoncms Modules directory, add the following lines of code to the dropbox-archive/lib/sync.sh around line 19, just after the node-red section (presuming your ‘Modules’ path is the same);
cp -pr /var/www/emoncms/Modules $DIR/../$tdir```
Paul
I’ve just updated one of the dropbox-uploader scripts which includes a number of bug fixes, increased performance and more importantly enables compatibility with Dropbox’s latest (v2) api.
Also added a feature which if installed on a emonpi or emonpi image in the RO partition, the script puts the OS into RW, and returns it to RO after the script has completed.
To update; git pull from the dropbox-archive directory.
Thanks to a suggestion from @ian I’ve made a further change to the dropbox-archive script, which now creates backup archives which are also compatible with the emonpi backup function.
What this means is that dropbox-archive will automatically backup your emoncms data & setting files regularly in the background to Dropbox as normal, but should you wish to restore your emonpi, the archive can now be downloaded from Dropbox and imported into your emonpi by using the backup - restore function.
The script also creates a backup of your node-red flows, settings, etc, however node-red is not currently restored by the emonpi backup script, but can be easily restored manually.
@ian in a private email, you mentioned; “…Very easy as you can select the file in your Drop Box directory from within Emoncms.”
Were you able to download the remote dropbox archive from within emoncms?
Yes! In the Emoncms backup page there is a “choose file” button. Hit that and you can select any file in any directory on your PC including dropbox. I am on Windows, don’t know if Linux is the same. Having selected the file there is an “Import Backup” button, click that and the dropbox file is imported.
But dropbox is a cloud based service, how are you accessing it?
… or are you using some sort of desktop app to first sync your dropbox (remote) files to your PC, and then loading them into emoncms from the local copy?
for sure it is via a local directory that syncs with dropbox (and an app)
I use also dropbox. The app keeps in sync a local directory (usually called dropbox) and your file in the cloud
so it is easy to restore locally from a backup on dropbox. The backup it is instantly pushed down again in the local directory.
If you create a dropbox account using Windows an app is installed at the same time. A dropbox directory is created and then synced automatically with the cloud. Any files placed in the cloud appear in local device dropbox directories within seconds. There is an Android app that does the same thing.
Good to see this working.