Backup and Restore

Creating a manual backup of your configuration and runtime data of check_mk is not really difficult. It is sufficient to save your main.mk, your conf.d directory (if existing) and the directories below /var/lib/check_mk. Calling check_mk with the option --backup basically does the same, but makes a few things right that are difficult to get right manually:

• The backup it creates is independent of your paths. That means, that it is possible to restore such a backup file on another installation of check_mk - even if it has completely other installation paths.
• The backup is also independent of file ownerships. A backup created on a root-based installation can be restored on an installation where check_mk uses a non-root user and vice versa. Also the ownerships and groups of files that must be written by Nagios or the Webserver are taken into account when restoring with --restore.
• Restoring a backup with --restore deletes files not contained in the backup. That way you won't get a mixture of files from the backup and older files in the same directories.

Creating a backup is simple. Choose a filename - for example backup-17.tar.gz and use the option --backup:

root@linux# check_mk --backup backup17.tar.gz

You'll find a gzip compressed tar archive backup-17.tar.gz in your current directory. You might also want to use the option -v for verbose output:

root@linux# check_mk -v --backup backup-17.tar.gz
Reading default settings from /usr/share/check_mk/modules/defaults
Reading config file /etc/check_mk/main.mk...
Creating backup file 'backup-17.tar.gz'...
  Adding Main configuration file (/etc/check_mk/main.mk) (286 bytes)...
  Adding Configuration sub files (/etc/check_mk/conf.d) (10240 bytes)...
  Adding Automatically inventorized checks (/var/lib/check_mk/autochecks...
  Adding Performance counters (/var/lib/check_mk/counters) (10240 bytes)...
  Adding Agent cache (/var/lib/check_mk/cache) (10240 bytes)...
  Adding Logwatch (/var/lib/check_mk/logwatch) (10240 bytes)...
Successfully created backup.

Restoring is just as easy. Simply do the same but with the option --restore:

root@linux# check_mk --restore backup-17.tar.gz

The following files and directories go into your backup - and will be replaced completely by a restore:

• the main configuration file (main.mk)
• the final configuration file final.mk, if present
• all files in your configuration subdirectory conf.d, if present
• automatically inventorized checks (usually /var/lib/check_mk/autochecks)
• current performance counters (usually /var/lib/check_mk/counters)
• stored logfiles of logwatch (usually /var/lib/check_mk/logwatch)
• cached files from the agents (usually /var/lib/check_mk/cache)

Please note, that all those files and directories are deleted before doing a restore, even if they are not present in the backup.

The precompiled host checks and the created Nagios configuration are not backuped since they are created automatically.