BURP - BackUp and Restore Program - Docker Images

These are my docker images for BURP - BackUp and Restore Program, made for my personal use and shared as-is in the hope it can be useful to someone, with no warranty of any kind.

Please be sure to test your backups before you need them.

These images have been prepared to allow all configuration to be set as environment variables, dynamically building the respective configuration files on container startup (entrypoint). If you don't like this approach, in theses the conf files could be directly overwritten through docker config or docker volumes, but that's untested.

Quick start

docker-compose.example is a sample compose file with the full stack: server, "localhost" client and UI (web interface). It'll configure a single localhost client and backup the host's /home using burp defaults for scheduling and retention.

For using it with the minimal needed customization:

1. Create passwords for the stack's default clients ("localhost" and "burpui"), eg:

openssl rand -base64 -out secrets/localhost 12
openssl rand -base64 -out secrets/burpui 12
sudo chown root. secrets/*
sudo chmod 600 secrets/*

2. Copy the docker-compose.server to docker-compose.yml and adapt as needed:

• TZ: Set your timezone
• server_directory: Set to the directory where the backups will be stored. Adjust the volume accordingly.

3. Basic testing

# Get a shell on client's container
docker-compose exec burp-client /bin/bash

# Create a test file
echo '123456' > /mnt/home/burp-test-file

# Run a forced backup
burp -a b

# Restore test file
burp -a r -r /mnt/home/burp-test-file -d /tmp

# Check restored file
cat /tmp/mnt/home/burp-test-file

# Cleanup
rm -rf /tmp/mnt /mnt/home/burp-test-file
burp -a delete -b 1

Configuration

Any configuration parameter accepted by burp can be passed as environment variables and will be set in the respective conf files at container start. These env vars must follow the expected syntax:

<configuration_file>_<parameter_name>[_sequence]

• configuration file: On which file this parameter should be set. One of:
  • server : server configuration file (/etc/burp/burp-server.conf)
  • client: client configuration file (/etc/burp/burp.conf)
  • clientconf_[n]: client configuration on server. n must be an integer starting at 0 and will be used to identify to which client each parameters belong. clientconf_[n]_name must be set to the client name and will be used as base for the configuration file name on /etc/burp/clientconfdir.
• parameter_name: Any configuration parameter accepted by burp
• sequence: integer sequence starting at 0 for parameters which can appear more than once, such as keep, timer_arg, include, etc.

For more details about burp configuration and the available parameters please check burp's documentation.

Burp UI

Burp UI is a web client which can be used to see a lot of useful stuff easily, such as available backups, size, backup reports, etc. On the default configuration it can be accessed on the docker host through port 5000 and default credentials (admin:admin).

Access with these default credentials can be very unsafe, so make sure it's adequate to your environment or reconfigure/disable it.

Adding new clients

1. Install the client on target system, either by using burp-client image or some other distribution;

2. Configure the client to connecto to burp-server and set a password

3. Create a file whose name must be the client's name and content the password on ./secrets

4. Map the file created as a secret on the docker-compose.yaml file, both on the server configuration and on secrets top level directive (use localhost as a base if needed)

5. Add the desired configuration to the server through clientconf_<n> env vars (n should be the last client's sequence + 1)

Other tips and tricks

Backup on removable disk

For backing up to a removable USB disk while avoiding unwanted backups to the mount point in case it isn't connected, making a symbolic link to the mount point (governed by udisk and therefore not available when the disk isn't connected) and using that link on server_directory has worked well for me.