---
last_review: "2025-01-01"
last_reviewer: "-"
documented_code: [ ]
---

```{tags} how-to, administrator, backup
```

# LinkAhead Backups

## Single Backup

Create a backup of LinkAhead via

```sh
linkahead -p path/to/profile.yml backup -d path/to/backup/directory
```

in order to save the SQL dump of your data (the `*.dump.sql` file) and a backup of LinkAhead's
internal file system (the `*.tar.gz`).

## Regular Backups

Of course, it is recommended to do regular backups. One way to do this is to use cronjob. This can
be nicely combined with [rsnapshot](https://github.com/rsnapshot/rsnapshot) to prevent the backups
from growing too much. With rsnapshot, rotating backups can be created that are kept for predefined
intervals. To combine this with LinkAhead backups, do the following.

1. Create a specific LinkAhead backup script that will be executed by rsnapshot and that stores the
   backups in its current working directory. For example, create a
   `/usr/local/bin/backup_linkahead_rsnapshot.sh` which contains the following lines (may have to be
   adapted to your LinkAhead installation, see above).

    ```sh
    #!/bin/sh

    linkahead backup -d ./
    ```

2. Adjust the rsnapshot configuration in `/etc/rsnapshot.conf` (see [its documentation](https://github.com/rsnapshot/rsnapshot#configuration)):

    * Create reasonable intervals that correspond to the frequency with which backups are rotated,
      e.g., `daily`, `weekly`, and `monthly` of which 14, 8, and 12 copies are kept, respectively.
      I.e., you'll be keeping daily backups for two weeks, weekly for the following two months, and
      monthly for a year.
    * Choose a meaningful `snapshot_root` in which the backups will be stored.
    * Add the script created above to the backup scripts in `/etc/rsnapshot.conf`. In the above
      example, the line looks like
      ```sh
      backup_script   /usr/local/bin/backup_linkahead_rsnapshot.sh    linkahead/
      ```
    * Possibly remove standard backup directories like `/etc/` and `/home/` from the
      `/etc/rsnapshot.conf`
3. Test the config with `rsnapshot configtest` for correctness.
4. Make a test run. For example `rsnapshot -t daily` or `rsnapshot daily`. The former performs a dry
   run, the latter actually creates a backup.
5. Add the rsnapshot commands to execute the backup intervals defined above to your crontab. In the
   above example, `daily` could be executed each day at 2 am, `weekly` on every Sunday at 1:30, and
   `monthly` on each first day of the month at 1 am with the following lines.

    ```
    0 2 * * *  /usr/bin/rsnapshot daily
    30 1 * * 1 /usr/bin/rsnapshot weekly
    0 1 1 * *  /usr/bin/rsnapshot monthly
    ```

6. Check (after some time) logs in `/var/log/syslog` (default log location)