Installation

Background

There are two different ways to install Cedar Backup. The easiest way is to install the pre-built Debian packages. This method is painless and ensures that all of the correct dependencies are available, etc.

If you are running a Linux distribution other than Debian or you are running some other platform like FreeBSD or Mac OS X, then you must install the python package. When using the Python package, you need to manage all of the external dependencies yourself.

Cedar Backup has been developed on a Debian GNU/Linux system and is primarily supported on Debian and other Linux systems. However, since it is written in portable Python 3, it should run without problems on just about any UNIX-like operating system. In particular, full Cedar Backup functionality is known to work on Debian and SuSE Linux systems, and client functionality is also known to work on FreeBSD and Mac OS X systems.

To run a Cedar Backup client, you really just need a working Python 3 installation. To run a Cedar Backup master, you will also need a set of other executables, most of which are related to building and writing CD/DVD images. A full list of dependencies is provided further on in this chapter.

Installing on a Debian System

The easiest way to install Cedar Backup onto a Debian system is by using a tool such as apt-get or aptitude.

Install Cedar Backup using this set of commands:

$ apt-get update
$ apt-get install cedar-backup3 cedar-backup3-doc

Several of the Cedar Backup dependencies are listed as “recommended” rather than required. If you are installing Cedar Backup on a master machine, you must install some or all of the recommended dependencies, depending on which actions you intend to execute. The stage action normally requires ssh, and the store action requires eject and either cdrecord/mkisofs or dvd+rw-tools. Clients must also install some sort of SSH server if a remote master will collect backups from them.

Once the package has been installed, you can proceed to configuration as described in Configuration.

note

The Debian package-management tools must generally be run as root. It is safe to install Cedar Backup to a non-standard location and run it as a non-root user. However, to do this, you must install the Python package instead of the Debian package.

Installing the Python Package

On platforms other than Debian, Cedar Backup is installed as a Python package. You will have to manage external dependencies on your own.

The easiest way to install the Python package is using Pip:

$ pip install cedar-backup3

There are other ways to install a package, but this is the simplest and is probably the mechanism most people will want to use. If you are an experienced Python user, feel free to use whichever mechanism you prefer on your own system.

Installing Dependencies

Cedar Backup requires a number of external packages in order to function properly. Before installing Cedar Backup, you must make sure that these dependencies are met.

Cedar Backup is written in Python 3 and requires version 3.8 or greater of the language.

Additionally, remote client peer nodes must be running an RSH-compatible server, such as the ssh server, and master nodes must have an RSH-compatible client installed if they need to connect to remote peer machines.

Master machines also require several other system utilities, most having to do with writing and validating CD/DVD media. On master machines, you must make sure that these utilities are available if you want to to run the store action:

  • mkisofs

  • eject

  • mount

  • unmount

  • volname

Then, you need this utility if you are writing CD media:

  • cdrecord

or these utilities if you are writing DVD media:

  • growisofs

All of these utilities are common and are easy to find for almost any UNIX-like operating system.

tip

Many UNIX-like distributions provide an automatic or semi-automatic way to install packages like the ones Cedar Backup requires (think RPMs for RedHat, Gentoo’s Portage system, Homebrew for Mac, or the BSD ports system). If you are not sure how to install these packages on your system, you might want to check out Dependencies. This appendix provides links to “upstream” source packages, plus as much information as I have been able to gather about packages for non-Debian platforms.

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