Implementing CheckMK Backups - a few questions

General
1

we currently have distributed monitoring environment with a handful of remote monitoring nodes.
this is on 2.1.0p9.cre

  1. how exactly does CheckMK Backup work with relation to this?
    i.e. would I have to log into each node and configure a backup job?

  2. Setup → Maintenance → Site Backup requires I setup a Backup Target -

I try to create a folder called /opt/omd/backups/ which is local to the check_mk server and when I use this in the destination I get an error: “Please enter a valid absolut pathname with / as a path separator” –
other attempts give me “you have to provide a canonical path” — not sure what I’m doing wrong…

  1. is there a way to does the configuration of Backup specify retention period ?
    i.e. I’d like to schedule nightly backup, but only keep the last 30days worth…
2

The backup function of checkmk does not know anything about rentention. It just overwrites the backup target.

If you want to keep more than one version of a backup you need a backup system that collects the backup checkmk has written.

You could create 7 backup jobs for each day of the week in checkmk and get a retention period of 7 days.

3

thanks! I have confirmed this behaviour and I guess it makes sense to setup individual jobs for each day…
7-day retention is probably more than enough.

hopefully someone can help with #1 and #2.
I’m not sure if I need to log into each distributed node and setup the same, or is everything safely backed up from the master node?

as for #2, I used /tmp and it worked, but I know this isn’t the final/expected location… will test further and update.

thx

4

I’ve had the same error message. If I remember correctly, the final slash seems to confuse Checkmk and leads to this (equally confusing) error message. Try /opt/omd/backups without the trailing /.

I’d call that a bug, since the path should work with a trailing slash just the same.

5

I actually tried that as well, same error.
I’m about to test out an NFS mount that has been provided to me, hopefully that works =)

6

Strange. Perhaps because it’s below /opt/omd (which I would leave alone).

I’m using /var/backups/checkmk/mysite without any problem.
The “Mountpoint” option needs to be off since it’s just a directory on the local disk.
And make sure the site user has proper permissions on the directory
(chown mysite:mysite /var/backups/checkmk/mysite).

1 Like
7

That should resolve the issue. I had the same problem and after giving the cmk-user the proper permissions on my desired directory it worked.

8

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