How To Backup and Restore OS X Server (Mountain Lion)

Thanks for the suggestions, but the first link is Lion Server specific and honestly looks very, very complicated and error prone, and the second link and scripts were written in 2009 for Snow Leopard Server.

Is there not a simple, foolproof command for making a solid backup of OS X Server? I thought I was doing with with CCC, and was surprised to find that OD failed. I'm just glad this happened while I'm working with a good live OS X Server drive.

I just got off the line with Enterprise Support and they suggested to boot into the Recovery partition, then use Disk Utility to recover using the original drive as the source and the new drive as the destination. I expect that to work, but I'm hoping not to have to bring down a server every time I want to create a solid bootable backup.

Thanks to some help from Mike Bombich and this thread, I've put together a bash script for Open Directory backup (using opendirectorybackup), backup backup (using serveradmin), and PostgreSQL backup (using pg_dumpall). This puts all the db backups in /private/var/backups, and keeps two-week-old sequential OD backups.

To restore OD, follow the instructions at OS X Server: Advanced Administration:

To restore Open Directory data, open the Terminal app (located in the Other folder in Launchpad) and enter the following command:

sudo slapconfig -restoredb /full/path/to/archive.sparseimage

For example, /full/path/to/archive.sparseimage could be /Volumes/Data/myODArchive.sparseimage

Here's the script with details on finer-grain backups in the comments:

ccc_preflight.sh

#!/bin/bash -x

# Carbon Copy Cloner pre-flight script

# OS X Server Backup

# Open Directory backup

# See /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.a pple.opendirectorybackup.plist

/Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/libexec/server_backup/opendirec torybackup

# Open Directory backup backup

# See http://help.bombich.com/discussions/questions/31239-how-to-backup-and-restore-os -x-server-mountain-lion

# See https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4142833?answerId=20243730022#20243730022

RECOVER=/private/var/backups/odbackup

TS=`date ''+%F''`

ODBACKUP_PASSWD=odbackuppasswd

# Remove archives older than two weeks

find $RECOVER -mindepth 1 -mtime +14 -exec /bin/rm {} ';'

cat <<SERVERADMIN_ODBACKUP | sudo /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/sbin/serveradmin command

dirserv:backupArchiveParams:archivePassword = $ODBACKUP_PASSWD

dirserv:backupArchiveParams:archivePath = $RECOVER/od_$TS

dirserv:command = backupArchive

SERVERADMIN_ODBACKUP

# PostgreSQL backups

# Backup all tables

sh -c '/Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/bin/pg_dumpall -U _postgres | bzip2 -c > /private/var/backups/postgres.dumpall.bz2'

# List all tables

# /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/bin/psql -q -d postgres _postgres --password -c '\list'

# Backup individual tables

# sh -c '/Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/bin/pg_dump -Fc -U _postgres roundcubemail > /private/var/backups/postgresbackup/roundcubemail.dump'

exit 0

And add this command to backup serveradmin settings:

# serveradmin configuration plist

echo "Generating serveradmin configuration plist..."

sh -c 'serveradmin -x settings all | bzip2 -c > /private/var/backups/serveradmin.plist.bz2'

are any new tweaks or updates to this.

No, aside from serveradmin settings backup mentioned above. I've been running this a while now and it's all gone well. Please post any issues.

You have configured CCC to abort your backup task if the preflight scripts ends with a non-zero exit status.

I don't know about that error. I keep a few loose offsite backup drives around and run this script by hand whenever I carry one "home," so I'm not an expert on CCC's auto configuration -- you may wish to ask Mike B.

So do I cut and paste the script (with the server admin addition) into Text Wrangler

Use vi! Half-kidding. Use your favorite ASCII text editor (TextEdit.app, emacs, vim, vi, whatever) to create a bash script file called ~/bin/ccc_preflight.sh . You can cut-and-paste from above, but this forum's line breaks and added spaces can create glitches, so edit those out. Then with the command line,

chmod a+x ~/bin/ccc_preflight.sh

sudo ~/bin/ccc_preflight.sh

Not an expert, but it doesn't look like postgreSQL is running, or listening on localhost. Try these:

sudo serveradmin status postgres

sudo serveradmin start postgres

sudo serveradmin stop postgres

sudo settings postgres:listen_addresses = "127.0.0.1,::1"

sudo serveradmin start postgres

It finally happened: a server crash corrupted my OD Master. Fortunately, restoring from the recent backup just worked. The Terminal command, documented at http://help.apple.com/advancedserveradmin/mac/3.0/#apdD88A9F25-BCA9-4AD8-A317-60 DB8A52353C, is:

sudo slapconfig -restoredb /private/var/backups/odbackup/od_2014-01-18.sparseimage

After that, I had to use Server.app to restart all my authentication-using services, and retell them to use my server's TLS certificate for authentication.