configuration on a headless server

[GuitarBilly]

I plan to transfer some existing restic backups on a headless linux server into npbackup.
The npbackup configuration file is normally created and updated via npbacup-gui on a screen.

My configuration plan is to

1. Prepare the configuration on another machine which has a display, then transfer that npbackup.conf to the headless server and use it.
2. Set the cronjobs by looking at how it is exported by npbackup into /etc/cron.d/npbackup

Any risk or shortcoming to do it this way?
Should I do it differently?

[deajan]

Indeed, you can setup a configuration file on GUI an use it later on CLI, there aren't any differences in interpretation.

I myself generally configure one of the example files with prometheus and upgrade server settings, than just change some stuff in the repo / group config and re-use it over and over again.

[enboig]

I am interested in installing it on a headless server; but I am missing some points.

• Does it need a systemd service to run? Or just cron?
• How can I use Viewer from a remote machine?
• Just copying the 3 binaries to /usr/local/bin is enough? There are more files in tar.gz files
• Do I need to set a generic config folder (/etc/npbackup or anything else) to store configuration? Or it should be in /root/.config folder?

[deajan]

@enboig So I'll try to answer my best:

Does it need a systemd service to run? Or just cron?

NPBackup doesn't need a service to run. It's a cron task that runs every X minutes on a laptop or at a given time on a server.

How can I use Viewer from a remote machine?

Launch the viewer, enter remote repository, example rest:https://my.remote.server/my_repo and password, and it will open that remote repo. If you need access to a S3/B2/Azure/other remote repository, you will have to set the according environment variables just like with restic

Just copying the 3 binaries to /usr/local/bin is enough? There are more files in tar.gz files

The binaries alone won't be sufficient. You'll need to copy the whole directory in the archives for the environment to work.
Generally speaking, I copy the directory to /usr/local/bin and then run with /usr/local/bin/npbackup-cli/npbackup-cli -c /path/to/my/npbackup.conf

Do I need to set a generic config folder (/etc/npbackup or anything else) to store configuration? Or it should be in /root/.config folder?

There are no specific rules. I use to create a /etc/npbackup directory and chmod 750 that directory so the config files are only readable by the user executing npbackup (generally root), but you could also create the conf files in /root.
I prefer /etc over /root since the latter directory is less likely to get backed up when migrating servers.