Greetings, > Sent: Saturday, November 22, 2025 at 6:57 PM > From: "G.W. Haywood" <[email protected]> > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [BackupPC-users] unable to build backuppc from source > > Hello again, > > On Sat, 22 Nov 2025, daggs wrote: > > On Sun, 16 Nov 2025, G.W. Haywood wrote: > > > On Sun, 16 Nov 2025, daggs via BackupPC-users wrote: > > > > > > > I'm working on building backuppc from source on alpine linux on the > > > > home folder of a user ... > > > ... > > > I've just committed a change to makeDist which adds the '--verbose' > > > option. If you grab the new version and run that with --verbose added > > > to the command line you will probably see what's missing ... > > > ... > > > Please let me know how you get on. So far, you're doing famously! > > > > With the new feature, I was able to compile it and install it on the > > home folder of the user I want to run it. > > :) > > > two question if I may: > > It's what we're here for. > > > 1. Is there a way to run the perl configuration silently? so the > > installation can be automated? > > Firstly I'm not sure that it's necessary for something to be silent > just so that it can be automated. But secondly, yes, in fact several > ways. The simplest is probably to send the output to the bit-bucket, > or '/dev/null' as it's known in the Unix world. If, when you run a > command in a shell script (or at the command prompt), you put at the > end of the command line in the script (or the command at the prompt) > the characters ' 1>/dev/null 2>&1' (excluding the quotes that I've > used there) then the output from the script (or command) will be sent > to a device whose only real job is to discard all its input. This is > one example of what we call 'redirection'. In this case redirecting > the standard output and standard error output 'streams'. Standard > output is '1>' (for the 'bash' shell and some others, just '>' on its > own means the same thing) and standard error is '2>'. The part that > reads '2>&1' means "send the output from standard error to the same > place that standard output will go". > > There are other ways to use redirection. You can send the output to a > file (or files, for example '>./stdout.log 2>./stderr.log'). That's > what I usually do if I don't want to see reams of verbose output on > the screen, but I want to be able to look back later at what it said. > > You might remember that I suggested in an earlier mail that you could > delete some text from the 'makeDist' script, to make its output more > verbose. That was exactly the same thing in reverse. But I digress. > > > 2. As I use alpine linux, I've opted not to use systemd, ... > > I understand perfectly. ;) > > > which file from .../src/init.d should I select? > > Using a search engine I searched for "alpine linux" "init scripts". > Here are a few of pages that I found with a few clicks. I haven't > spent a lot of time on them but they look to be useful documentation. > > https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Writing_Init_Scripts > https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/OpenRC > https://github.com/OpenRC/openrc > > Typical startup/shutdown scripts will do things like checking that the > resources which need to be available *are* available so that the thing > which is being started can, when started, do its job. For BackupPC, > for example, you'd normally expect at least all the filesystems to be > accessible - so that BackupPC can find its configuration files, write > backup data to the pool and so on - and the network to be functioning > so it can fetch from other systems the data that you want to back up. > The 'shutdown' part of the startup/shutdown scripts generally means a > way of stopping the thing that was started in a 'graceful' way. Some > processes are a little fussy about that, they may for example need to > close files in a particular way or make sure that when the files are > closed there's something written to the file which marks it as having > been 'safely' closed, whatever 'safely' means. BackupPC isn't fussy. > > Because you're running BackupPC in a user home directory I'm guessing > that things like that will already have been taken care of, so I'm not > sure that any of the init-style scripts will be exactly what you want. > Perhaps all you'd really need to do is type the command > > /path/to/your/BackupPC/bin/BackupPC -d > > or alternatively have a cron job check that BackupPC is running, and > if it isn't, start it (using that same command). Once it's started, > the BackupPC daemon will run until something stops it. Around here, > it will typically run for many months at a time without interruption. > > Anyway after all that it seems to me after a quick look at the docs > above that people have taken Gentoo scripts and used them as a basis > for something on Alpine. That might be a good place to start as it's > stuff you will probably want to be familiar with in future anyway. In > addition to starting the BackupPC backup server itself you might also > want the same script to start a Web server (probably Apache) or maybe > at least check that it's running, and if not warn you. If BackupPC is > configured to use an SCGI process as an intermediary between it and a > Web server, it will start it (and stop it) itself. > > Note that although a full-bells-n-whistles BackupPC installation will > run a Web server, BackupPC will run fine without one. It will still > back things up. The Web server is primarily needed for point'n'shoot > monitoring and control. After you start BackupPC you *can* control it > and get information from it by sending messages to it from the command > line. There are scripts in the archives of this Mailing List (also on > the BackupPC Wiki) which show you how you can do that sort of thing. > You might for example run a cron job which queries BackupPC each day - > perhaps at a time when you expect all the backups to be finished - and > sends you an email with the results. > > HTH
I've managed to get backuppc installed and started up. I need to see how I can test the web-service as the machine is a vm if needed, I can share the script I'm using. as I'm using openrc, I used the gentoo's scripts > > -- > > 73, > Ged. > > > _______________________________________________ > BackupPC-users mailing list > [email protected] > List: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users > Wiki: https://github.com/backuppc/backuppc/wiki > Project: https://backuppc.github.io/backuppc/ > _______________________________________________ BackupPC-users mailing list [email protected] List: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users Wiki: https://github.com/backuppc/backuppc/wiki Project: https://backuppc.github.io/backuppc/
