Automated Rsync with SSH

Requires the following packages:

• rsync
• openssh
• cron (or vixie-cron)

Installation

• log into local(also referred to as source or SRC) machine (where push will come from)
• Unpack Synch to home folder, eg. /home/username/Synch

Make the follwoing files: error.log, access.log and task.log

$ touch error.log access.log task.log config db_config

Config

change the defaults to your environment

ORIGIN=/path/to/root/to/be/pushed/
TARGET=/path/on/server/where/push/received/

REMOTE=user@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
SSHKEY=~/.ssh/my-rsync-key

Make rsync keys

$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 2048 -f /home/username/.ssh/username-rsync-key 
Generating public/private rsa key pair. 
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): [press enter here] 
Enter same passphrase again: [press enter here] 
Your identification has been saved in /home/username/.ssh/username-rsync-key. 
Your public key has been saved in /home/username/.ssh/username-rsync-key.pub. 
The key fingerprint is: 
2e:28:d9:ec:85:21:e7:ff:73:df:2e:07:78:f0:d0:a0 username@thishost 

NOTE: leave passphrase empty, just hit enter.

You now have two new files in ~/.ssh; username-rsync-key and username-rsync-key.pub

Now we need to get the pub file over to the remote server

$ scp username-rsync-key.pub remoteuser@remotehost:/home/username/Synch/

Remote Machine

ssh into your remote machine

$ ssh remoteuser@remotehost

Now that you are on the remote machine, we need to add the key to to you authorized keys file.

$ cd /home/username/Synch/
$ cat username-rsync-key.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Databse import

A .sql file should be included with your nightly pull, to run a database import, call the importProdData.sh script via cron:

$HOME/Tasks/Sync/importProdData.sh > $HOME/Tasks/Sync/import.log 2>&1

Testing

On dev machine, cd to the Synch directory.

$ cd /home/username/Synch

Run the following command to initiate a test push.

$ bash synch.sh

If you are satisfied with the results, run the follwoing command to initate a production push.

$ bash synch.sh prod

Cron

Cron runs with a limited set of environmental variables, so you need to be sure SSH_AUTH_SOCK is being set in sync.sh. Open the cront task list for the current user.

$ crontab -e

The task you will need to run is:

$HOME/Tasks/Sync/sync.sh prod > $HOME/Tasks/Sync/task.log 2>&1

Your crontab should look like the following:

# m   h   dom  mon dow   command
  *   *    *    *   *    $HOME/Tasks/Sync/sync.sh prod > $HOME/Tasks/Sync/task.log 2>&1

Pulling to Production machine

Update the Makefile, need to set ORIGIN, TARGET and REMOTE. Origin is the location of the project on the machine you are pulling to (prod) eg.

ORIGIN=/home/user/project/public_html/

Target is the path on the remote machine (stage) eg.

TARGET=/var/www/myproject/public_html/

Remote is the credentials you use to log into the remote (stage) machine eg.

REMOTE="jackson@my.ip.address.com"