Problems getting Rsnapshot to work, even just for a local backup

Question

my goal is to backup a remote server. However, I first want to get just a local backup working, running on Ubuntu 20.

For this, my /etc/rsnapshot.conf file is the following:

config_version  1.2

snapshot_root   /var/backupsFromRsnapshot/

cmd_rsync       /usr/bin/rsync

# The retain arguments define the number of snapshots to retain at different le>
# I'm going to run cron job beta daily (so below will keep 7 daily snapshots), >
retain  alpha   6
retain  beta    7
retain  gamma   4

# Below defines what folders I want included in the snapshots.
backup  /home/  localhost/
backup  /etc/   localhost/
backup  /var/   localhost/
backup  /usr/local/     localhost/

interval        hourly  6

If I run "rsnapshot configtest", I get the following result:

SYNTAX OK

Then I test the backup with the following command: rsnapshot -t alpha The result is as follows:

mkdir -m 0700 -p /var/backupsFromRsnapshot/ 
mkdir -m 0755 -p /var/backupsFromRsnapshot/alpha.0/ 
/usr/bin/rsync -a --delete --numeric-ids --relative --delete-excluded \
    /home/ /var/backupsFromRsnapshot/alpha.0/localhost/ 
mkdir -m 0755 -p /var/backupsFromRsnapshot/alpha.0/ 
/usr/bin/rsync -a --delete --numeric-ids --relative --delete-excluded /etc/ \
    /var/backupsFromRsnapshot/alpha.0/localhost/ 
mkdir -m 0755 -p /var/backupsFromRsnapshot/alpha.0/ 
/usr/bin/rsync -a --delete --numeric-ids --relative --delete-excluded \
    --filter=-/_/var/backupsFromRsnapshot /var/ \
    /var/backupsFromRsnapshot/alpha.0/localhost/ 
mkdir -m 0755 -p /var/backupsFromRsnapshot/alpha.0/ 
/usr/bin/rsync -a --delete --numeric-ids --relative --delete-excluded \
    /usr/local/ /var/backupsFromRsnapshot/alpha.0/localhost/ 
touch /var/backupsFromRsnapshot/alpha.0/ 

However, if I check my /var/ directory, there is no backupsFromRsnapshot folder, yet any backup file. Is my config correct? Is my test expression correct? Where is the fault? Thanks!

Answer 1

You've tested the configuration (-t) but you haven't yet run it. Here's what the man page (see man rsnapshot) says,

-t test, show shell commands that would be executed

Use this to run the rsnapshot backup, optionally with -v to see what's going on:

rsnapshot alpha

Don't mix retain and interval; they mean the same thing and it can get confusing. Similarly, make sure they're in order to to bottom in a group with the most frequent first.