System backup/restore

The Airlock Gateway admin menu and built-in backup scripts allow to:

  • Back up all your custom settings for fast disaster recovery after a re-install on the same host.
  • Migrate custom settings to a newly installed system of the same version as the backup file was created for. The new system should have at least the same or better technical specifications, e.g. same or bigger disk and RAM size, same interface names, etc.
  •  
    Functional limitation

    There might be host-specific settings that cannot be migrated to a new host (e.g. if MAC addresses differ).

 
Notice

Note that this type of backup does not replace an external backup of the configuration history.
It also does not cover failover clusters, each cluster node must be backed up separately e.g. before performing a cluster upgrade.

System Backup menu page

The following instruction uses the Airlock Gateway admin menu interface.

  1. Log in via ssh as user menu to access the Airlock Gateway admin menu.
  2. Choose 1) System Management >> 6) System Backup to go to the following menu screen:
  3.  
    Terminal box
                                Airlock Gateway 8.0 STANDALONE
        System Backup
        =================

            1) Backup

            2) Restore

            3) Edit configuration

            4) Enable daily cron job


            b) Back to Main Menu
            q) Quit

        Your choice?
  4. Choose the type of action:
    • Select 1) Backup to create a backup file in /home/backup/backup.tar.gz .
    • Select 2) Restore to restore a backup from /home/backup/backup.tar.gz. This will trigger a reboot after completion.
    • Select 3) Edit configuration to configure which files and directories to include in the system backup.
    •  
      Notice

      Note that some directories are excluded by default, such as /tmp/, /var/tmp/, /proc/, /run etc.

    • Select 4) Enable daily cron job to create automated backups. When enabled, the job runs daily at 01:00.
  6. After you have made your changes, select q) Quit to exit the menu.

Backup and restore using built-in scripts

If you don't want to use the Airlock Gateway admin menu interface you can also trigger the backup and restore with the scripts below. Note that using these scripts requires root access.

  • /opt/airlock/base/bin/airlock-backup
  • /opt/airlock/base/bin/airlock-restore

Download backup files with scp

Backup files that have been created using the Airlock Gateway admin menu interface can be downloaded with the predefined non-root technical user backup. This user has no password defined by default. You can however use /home/backup/.ssh/authorized_keys to store your technical SSH public key.

To retrieve the backup file use:

 
Terminal box
scp -i ~/.ssh/id_airlock backup@airlock:/home/backup/backup.tar.gz .

Make sure to save the file somewhere secure.