This is backup management software used by Futurice. Every employee can create personal backup disk (virtual disk in LVM) using this website. System sets up separate user account and password for backups. Idea is to separate backups from normal user passwords.

• Backup storage in LVM volume (/dev/backupdisks in our setup)
• ext4 (or btrfs, may not work. We use ext4 at Futurice)
• ACLs enabled
• Django installed (>= 1.4)
• django_compressor (at least version 1.2a1 works, most probably others too)
• yui-compressor
• Web server with authentication (We use single sign-on at Futurice, but for example basic auth is fine). Preferrably https as the password is rather sensitive information.
• Samba (for Windows backups, see also INSTALL.samba.md)
• netatalk (for AFP support, see also INSTALL.afp.md)
• rrdtool

Copy-paste for installing packages:

apt-get install e2fslibs e2fsprogs apache2 libapache2-mod-fastcgi python-flup samba rrdtool python-django yui-compressor
pip install django_compressor

• netatalk installation
• samba configuration
• LVM configuration

1. Install prerequisities
2. add "backupmanagement" user
3. checkout code to /home/backupmanagement/
4. add sudoers entry (see below) and configure wrappers
5. Check values in backup/settings.py (at least LVM_ROOT and DIRECTORIES_ROOT)
6. In directory backup/ run "python manage.py check_prerequisities". Fix possible problems.
7. run "python manage.py syncdb"
8. run "python manage.py collectstatic; python manage.py compress --force"
9. start fastcgi server: "sudo -u backupmanagement -i; cd backup; ./bin/start.sh"
10. configure apache2
11. add crontab entries (see below)

We recommend using FastCGI for better privilege separation. You should never run this application under web server user. This application requires quite many sudo permissions, and it's bad idea to grant those to web server (and every application running under it).

This is optional. Without crontab entries, no history graphs will be generated. Also, @reboot line starts FastCGI application after reboot - if you skip that, it might be good idea to write short init script instead (or use rc.local, depending on your distribution).

Add to backupmanagement user crontab:

sudo -u backupmanagement crontab -e

following lines:

@reboot /home/backupmanagement/backup/bin/start.sh # starts fastcgi server on reboot.
* * * * * cd /home/backupmanagement/backup; python manage.py rrd_waittime
*/5 * * * * cd /home/backupmanagement/backup; python manage.py update_df_stats

• enable ssl
• enable whatever authentication, for example basic auth. Alternatively, you can modify Django application to use built-in user database.

RewriteEngine on
FastCGIExternalServer /var/www/backup.fcgi -socket /home/backupmanagement/backup/backup.sock

RewriteRule ^/backup/static/(.*)$ /home/backupmanagement/backup/static/$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^/backup/(.*)$ /backup.fcgi/$1 [QSA,L]

IMPORTANT: If wrappers directory is inside a directory owned by user running Django application, compromised account leads to total compromise of the system. Steps to protect against this:

mkdir -p /opt/backupmanagement
cp -R /home/backupmanagement/wrappers /opt/backupmanagement/wrappers/
chown -R root:root /opt/backupmanagement 
chmod -R 700 /opt/backupmanagement/*

Add this line to sudoers (sudo visudo):

backupmanagement ALL=NOPASSWD: /opt/backupmanagement/wrappers/chmod.py, /opt/backupmanagement/wrappers/chown.py, /opt/backupmanagement/wrappers/chpasswd.py, /opt/backupmanagement/wrappers/defragment-btrfs.py, /opt/backupmanagement/wrappers/deluser.py, /opt/backupmanagement/wrappers/df.py, /opt/backupmanagement/wrappers/dmsetup.py, /opt/backupmanagement/wrappers/fetch_backups.py, /opt/backupmanagement/wrappers/lvcreate.py, /opt/backupmanagement/wrappers/lvdisplay.py, /opt/backupmanagement/wrappers/lvextend.py, /opt/backupmanagement/wrappers/lvremove.py, /opt/backupmanagement/wrappers/mkdir.py, /opt/backupmanagement/wrappers/mkfs-ext4.py, /opt/backupmanagement/wrappers/mount.py, /opt/backupmanagement/wrappers/resize2fs.py, /opt/backupmanagement/wrappers/rmdir.py, /opt/backupmanagement/wrappers/rm-timemachine.py, /opt/backupmanagement/wrappers/setfacl.py, /opt/backupmanagement/wrappers/smbpasswd.py, /opt/backupmanagement/wrappers/umount.py, /opt/backupmanagement/wrappers/useradd.py, /opt/backupmanagement/wrappers/vgdisplay.py

Also, check that env_reset is enabled in sudoers configuration (usually it's on by default).

All sudo commands go through python wrappers. That way backupmanagement user can only run specific commands with safe arguments. For example, compromised user can only delete backups, not random files from OS. It can't change root password or add new user with uid/gid 0 etc. Unfortunately, attacker with access to backupmanagement user can change other users passwords and access backup files. Preventing this while still allowing automatic configuration is not possible.

You may want to add administrators (basically everyone with additional sudo rights) to wrappers/wrappers_settings.py file to prevent changes to admin passwords and/or files. If you change this file, be sure to copy it to /opt/backupmanagement/wrappers (or any other directory you are using for sudo wrappers).

Will do some day:

• better error handling (now just throws traceback to user)
• tested btrfs support

All employees can create their own backup spaces. Our setup currently supports Windows backups over samba (unfortunately, Windows 7 complains that "Your files are not protected", no idea how to fix that) and Mac OS X Time Machine over AFP. For AFP instructions, check out INSTALL.afp.md. We had some difficulties with setting up AFP, and to get it working with Mac OS X Lion.

We use newest Ubuntu LTS (as a time of writing, 12.04). Our servers run on virtual machines under KVM. One of backup servers use disk rack connected to PCI-E RAID controller (RAID5 + hot spare), other one is Synology NAS device with RAID6 over iSCSI in separate network.

Autentication is handled by single sign-on, so no manual user account management for this system is required at all.