When I originally set up my Minecraft server some 4 years ago I designed a script to automatically backup the world, plugins and database entries to a Dropbox folder, the script would run in the middle of the night and email me with the output, such is the beauty of cron. The Dropbox daemon running in the background would pick up the new files and sync them online. A simple solution.
As time went on the script became more complex to handle certain issues I had – making sure before we backup the files the previous were deleted, and when they were deleted we wait for dropbox to finish syncing before shoving the new ones in its place. That tended to avoid most data conflicts I experienced.
Eventually as time went on and we moved away from Minecraft (although still running it) we started hosting websites for ourselves, small projects we work on and even some other people. It became sensible to extend the script to backup websites, mail directories and server configurations, in the event of a system collapse. Dropbox, despite its many features, didn’t provide enough space, I’d managed to accrue 3.5gb of free space through the various bonus’ they have but it was no longer enough. On top of this our Minecraft server runs Centos 5 – which although still supported by RedHat until 2017 is old, after a recent format of the MC server I tried to reinstall Dropbox only to find that Dropbox could no longer be run, and even if I downgraded there was no way to connect the server to my account due to the version difference. After asking on the Dropbox community if there were any plans to go back to support RHEL5 it was a begrudging no.
Alternatives are available, due to a bonus I received with my phone my Google Drive has over 100Gb of space, but no command line (nothing official or native at least) I had a look around at some of the other Cloud Solutions and found Copy.
While not seeming very elaborate or exciting (as exciting as cloud storage can get) it was supported on Android, iOS, Windows and Linux – as well as providing 15GB for a basic account . This would easily cover my needs.
Unfortunately, Copy also didn’t provide support for RHEL5, so as it happens my MC server is still without a proper Daemon running. However I’ve worked around it by using an SCP script to just shove everything onto my newer, fancier, RHEL6 box.
The Copy daemon can be downloaded from their site in a .tar.gz – uncompress it and stick it somewhere where you normally stick programs. For me it was /etc/copy/
wget https://copy.com/install/linux/Copy.tgz --no-check-certificate
tar zxvf ./Copy.tgz
mv ./copy /etc/
cd /etc/copy/x86_64
If you’re running purely in command line the only thing you need to run is CopyConsole, which can be found in either the x86 or x86_64 folders. Initially to set it up you need to provide your username, password and the directory you wish to set as the directory to sync.
mkdir /root/Copy
./CopyConsole -u=myemail@domain.com -p="my password with spaces" -r=/root/Copy
This should then connect to your account and try to sync. Try adding some files through the web interface and seeing if you notice them downloading. Obviously running the command in the foreground you’re stuck watching the console, so run it in a screen. Once you’re ran the Console app with the required arguments it will have written a config in your home directory, so you don’t need to pass them again and always have them visible in your processes.
screen -dmS CopyDaemon /etc/copy/x86_64/CopyConsole -r=/root/Copy
screen -x CopyDaemon
That will let your app run happily in the background, and anything you put into /root/Copy will be synced. One other thing to do would be to check that the daemon is running when you do your backup job – I’m not sure how reliable this service is yet.
echo "Checking Copy Daemon status..."
SERVICE='CopyConsole'
if ps ax | grep -v grep | grep $SERVICE > /dev/null
then
echo "$SERVICE service running"
echo ""
else
echo "$SERVICE is not running, Starting now"
echo ""
screen -dmS CopyDaemon /etc/copy/x86_64/CopyConsole -r=/root/Copy/
sleep 10
fi
The only downsides to Copy over Dropbox is that I find the sync speeds much slower, there is also no Status interface, so I can’t quite figure out to automate checking if Copy is done Syncing, however it seems to be a bit lighter on the processor (much more so than Google Drive) so all in all seems a worthwhile investment until Dropbox offers up more support or Google Drive goes native.
Sources:
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