21 Jan 2014
Deleting backup from BackupPC – Manually
Problem
BackupPC does not have scripts or commands to actually remove backup from the pool. One day you will want to remove that and for that purpose you have to “hack” your way in.
Solution
Easiest way to delete backup for me was this way:
cd /var/lib/BackupPC/pc/<client>/ ls rm -fR <backup_number> /usr/share/BackupPC/bin/BackupPC_nightly 0 255
After this, you will see space reclaimed and you can check it with df, but you still need to remove statistic line, otherwise you will see it in your web interface. To do that:
nano /var/lib/BackupPC/pc/<client>/backups
With ctrl+k you can remove the line with <backup_number>.
Relog to your web interface and voila! No more <backup_number>.
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Thanks mate, instructions are spot on.
Just a note for Debian users, there is no capitalisation in the paths, so /var/lib/BackupPC/pc/ becomes /var/lib/backuppc/pc/ etc.
Nice post!, backuppc is a nice piece of software, but regarding some administrative tasks is quite ugly
Cheers.
It has it’s ups and downs. Opensource is still waiting for serious and great backup solution to rule them all… BackupPC is sufficient for the basic backup tasks though.
Hi,
I’m trying to remove a host from backuppc as this is no longer required and use the extra space generated for other backup jobs. Unfortunately I’m new to Linux and this is a system that I’ve inherited from my predecessor so it’s all very unfamiliar to me. The backup server has clearOS running and from there I can access the backuppc web interface. Is there a simple way to remove the host file from the web interface or if I need to get to a cmd prompt to edit it how exactly do I do this ?
A su to user backuppc was required in my case, to run the nightly job:
runuser -l backuppc -c ‘/usr/share/backuppc/bin/BackupPC_nightly 0 255’