On setting up the config file

***********************************************
***   pibackup - smart home backup system   ***
***********************************************
>>> main >>> pibackup config file

c) Copy config template to ~/.config/pibackup
q) Quit this page (go back)

c/q>

Entering “c” creates a copy of the config file in the home directory.

Do this and return to the main screen with “q”.

After this, in the main screen, enter “c” to navigate to the rclone setup.

On configuring rclone

This leads straight into the configuration dialogue of rclone itself. As pibackup is a wrapper using rclone, you are now interacting with rclone directly.

The tool is very well documented here. Please have a peek and check the section related to the backup storage you want to use. Typically remote drives such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Box or OneDrive might be in use at your end and considered for storing the backup. While you can use pretty much everything, please find links to popular choices:

• Google Drive

• Dropbox

• Box

• OneDrive

As mentioned above: Wherever the documentation asks you to run “rclone config”, this is what you are actually doing in the pibackup dialogue already.

On adding the cron job

Back in the main dialogue, select “a” to amend the crontab, which adds an entry to start the backup process at every reboot.

If you want to double check, do this with:

$ crontab -l

In case you installed in a virtual environment, please adapt the cron table entry to resemble a format like:

@reboot /home/pi/.pibackup-venv/bin/python /home/pi/.pibackup-venv/bin/pibackup &

This calls the virtualenv python interpreter and sets the python path accordingly.

On system type

Currently the system types “fhem” or “iobroker” are supported and can be used as values.

On rclone parameters

The drive name identifies the remote storage location you created in the rclone setup. Please enter the name you used there. Please include the colon at the end, like “drive:” (in the documentation examples it is often “remote:”)

The cloud path specifies the folder on the remote drive. Choose to your liking.

On schedules

Typically you can leave this as is. The parameters are pretty verbose:

• backup_local schedules the weekday on which the smart phone system backups are run.

• clean_local schedules the weekday on which the local maintenance on the backup folder is being done.

• cloud_sync schedules the weekday on which the sync to the cloud drive is performed.