DragonFly On-Line Manual Pages

charon.ftp(1)                                                    charon.ftp(1)

NAME
       charon.ftp - remove backup files that exceed a certain age from an FTP
       aite

SYNOPSIS
       charon.ftp --host host [--ssl] --user name (--password password |
       --readpassword) [--dir directory] --maxage days (--profile identifier |
       --all) [--truncate] [--dry-run] [--verbose] [--help]

       The program charon.ftp removes backup archives created by tartarus from
       an FTP server once they reach a certain age and expire. Files that are
       older than the number of days specified on the command line are
       considerer candidates for removal unless other, non-expired backups are
       based on them, so full backups may survive longer than expected.

OPTIONS AND ARGUMENTS
       --host server
           Specify the FTP server to connect to

       --ssl
           Use SSL to secure the connection (requires Net::FTPSSL)

       --user name
           Define the username to authenticate with

       --password pass
           Set the password to authenticate with

       --readpassword
           Instead of specifying the password on the commandline, it can also
           be read from the standard input. This is preferable for obvious
           security reasons.

       --dir
           Specify the directory on the server the backups files are stored
           in.

       --maxage n
           Set the maximum number of days after which a backup is expired.

       --profile name
           Set the profile name to process. This is mandatory unless --all is
           supplied.

       --all
           When this is set, the expiration date is applied to alle files
           found on the server and identified as tartarus backups.

       --truncate
           This option enables replacing files with /dev/null on FTP server
           before deletion.  Some FTP servers won't allow deleting files when
           the quota is reached, this flag enables a workaround.

       --dry-run
           This option prevents charon from actually deleting files.

       --verbose
           This option makes charon more verbose about the actions made

       --help
           This parameter shows a brief command reference.

EXAMPLE
       Using the script is fairly simple and can probably be best explained by
       looking at an example:

           $ charon.ftp --host safehaven --user john --password SECRET --dir / --maxage 7 --profile home --verbose --dry-run

       This command line will try to log into the server "safehaven" using the
       user name "john" and his password "SECRET" and remove backup file from
       the profile "home" with are more than 7 days old. Due to the command
       line switch "--dry-run", no files are actually deleted - the script
       will only explain its potential actions in its output.

Integration with Tartarus
       Charon does not (and in fact, cannot) read tartarus backup profiles; by
       using hooks however it can be called from Tartarus after completing a
       successfull backup run. This way, Tartarus can pass the configuration
       variables to Charon:

           # Hook in Charon
           TARTARUS_POST_PROCESS_HOOK() {
               # pass configuration variables to charon
               # transmit the password through stdin to hide it from "ps ax"
               local CHARON="/usr/sbin/charon.ftp"
               local MAX_AGE_IN_DAYS="7"
               echo -n "$STORAGE_FTP_PASSWORD" | $CHARON \
                   --host "$STORAGE_FTP_SERVER" --user "$STORAGE_FTP_USER" \
                   --readpassword \
                   --dir "$STORAGE_FTP_DIR" \
                   --maxage "$MAX_AGE_IN_DAYS" \
                   --profile "$NAME"
           }

       TARTARUS_POST_PROCESS_HOOK will only be executed in case of a
       successfull backup, so there won't be any files removed if tartarus
       encounters an error during the new backup creation.

AUTHOR
       Stefan Tomanek <stefan.tomanek@wertarbyte.de>

0.9.8                             2016-02-19                     charon.ftp(1)