AutoConfigBackup Testing and Status¶

After configuring the Automatic Configuration Backup Service, the best practice is to perform tests to confirm backups are working properly.

Testing AutoConfigBackup¶

Testing backups is a vital part of every backup strategy. Without testing the entire backup and restore process, administrators can never know if a backup is viable. As such, it is crucial to test creating backups and restoring backups when first configuring AutoConfigBackup and periodically after.

Danger

Do not skip backup testing!

Without knowing if the entire backup and restore process works, any problems in the process may not be discovered until it is too late during a critical moment.

The only good backup is a tested backup!

Test Manual Backup¶

The following steps cover the general tasks involved in testing a manual backup. For specifics on each step, follow the cross-reference links.

Configure and enable AutoConfigBackup
Create a Manual AutoConfigBackup Entry entry
Wait at least one minute
Check if the backup succeeded
Make a change, such as editing and saving a firewall or NAT rule
Restore the manual backup and reboot
Check if the change made after the manual backup is present

The restored configuration should not contain the change made after the manual backup.

Test Configuration Change Backup¶

The following steps cover the general tasks involved in testing AutoConfigBackup when it is configured to make a new backup on each configuration change. For specifics on each step, follow the cross-reference links.

Configure and enable AutoConfigBackup using a Backup Frequency of Automatically backup on every configuration change
Make a change to trigger a configuration backup, such as editing and saving a firewall or NAT rule
Wait at least one minute
Check if the backup succeeded
Make a second change, such as editing and saving a different firewall or NAT rule
Restore the first backup and reboot
Check if the second change is present

The restored configuration should not contain the second change.

Test Scheduled Backups¶

The following steps cover the general tasks involved in testing AutoConfigBackup when it is configured to create backups on a schedule. For specifics on each step, follow the cross-reference links.

Configure and enable AutoConfigBackup using a Backup Frequency of Automatically backup on a regular schedule with an appropriate schedule

Tip

For ease of testing, configure the schedule to backup every 5 or 10 minutes, then configure a more reasonable schedule after testing, such as once per day.
Make a change to trigger a configuration backup, such as editing and saving a firewall or NAT rule
Wait until after the scheduled backup time passes, plus at least one additional minute
Check if the backup succeeded
Make a second change, such as editing and saving a different firewall or NAT rule
Restore the scheduled backup and reboot
Check if the second change is present

The restored configuration should not contain the second change.

Check Restore Tab¶

Administrators can check the status of an AutoConfigBackup run by reviewing the Backup List on the Restore tab.

AutoConfigBackup fetches its list of backup entries from the AutoConfigBackup service. If the backup is in the list on the Restore tab, the backup was successful and is present on the server.

Depending on the Backup Frequency, a backup may not appear right away. For example, a scheduled backup won’t appear until after the scheduled time passes. For manual backups or backups on each configuration change, new backups may not appear for at least one minute as the uploads are queued and then processed out of that queue.

If there are backups pending upload, the backup list will contain a note with a count of staged backup entries.

../_images/acb-staged.png — Bottom of AutoConfigBackup **Restore** tab backup list showing backup count and number of backups staged waiting to upload.¶

If a backup fails, AutoConfigBackup logs an alert and displays a notice in the GUI.

View and/or download a backup then confirm it has the expected content.

AutoConfigBackup Logs¶

AutoConfigBackup creates log entries which describe its successes and failures. These can be found in the System/General sub-tab of the System Logs.

This is a sample of log entries created when creating a Manual AutoConfigBackup Entry:

/services_acb_backup.php: Staging AutoConfigBackup encrypted configuration backup for deferred
          upload to https://acb.netgate.com
/usr/local/sbin/acbupload.php: Starting upload of staged AutoConfigBackup encrypted configuration
          backups to https://acb.netgate.com
/usr/local/sbin/acbupload.php: Completed AutoConfigBackup encrypted configuration backup upload
          to https://acb.netgate.com (success)

Check the logs when creating backups to ensure there are no errors which were not also printed in notices in the GUI.

Some AutoConfigBackup logs are informational and do not indicate a problem. For example, AutoConfigBackup skips certain redundant or frequent and not critical configuration changes. When AutoConfigBackup ignores a change, it logs the following message:

Skipping staging AutoConfigBackup entry for ignored reason: <reason>