Last updated on Friday 1st of March 2024 04:00:43 PM

©XSIBackup-App

Change log


  • ©XSIBackup-App 1.1.0.9
    • Bug fix: fixed bug in VM selection routines. In servers with many VMs by similar names ©XSIBackup-App could select more than one VM at the same time resulting in errors and the VM being skipped. Always try to give your VMs a new distinctive name when you clone them to prevent any issues derived from many almost identical .vmx files.

  • ©XSIBackup-App 1.1.0.8
    • Improvement: internal version code rearrangement.

  • ©XSIBackup-App 1.1.0.7
    • Bug fix: revised SMTP client to avoid LF chars even in HTML bodies. This will prevent the 'bare LF char' error in strict SMTP servers.

  • ©XSIBackup-App 1.1.0.6
    • Improvement: inner version, revision of SMTP related functions.

  • ©XSIBackup-App 1.1.0.5
    • Improvement: inner version, code reorganization.

  • ©XSIBackup-App 1.1.0.4
    • Bug fix: fixed bug causing errors under some circumstances on VM names with interstitial spaces.
    • Improvement: now the --exclude argument accepts the full name of a VM too. You don't need to exclude all disks in a VM you can just pass the VM name.

  • ©XSIBackup-App 1.1.0.3
    • Bug fix: fixed issue with --config-backup argument. A /scratch/dowloads folder is required in the backup host to be able to generate a config backup
    • Bug fix: fixed bug that would hide VMs with interstitial spaces in the GUI when selecting VMs.
    • Bug fix: log files would be overwritten insted of appended to, this was fixed.

  • ©XSIBackup-App 1.1.0.2
    • Improvement: the mail sending function has been improved. Now it reads the SMTP protocol in search of the queued line via regexp ("^250 (2\\.0\\.0)?.*queued.*") to confirm SMTP delivery, instead of just trying to detect 5XX lines (errors) in the protocol. In case the queued line is not found an error is raised and the full protocol conversation is printed on screen.
    • Improvement: the default SMTP client is again Sendmail to ensure seamless operation when using the --delegate argument. It's transparent to the user 99% of the times.
    • Improvement: the GUI now allows to test SMTP servers by e-mail client, you can choose to use Sendmail or cURL.

  • ©XSIBackup-App 1.1.0.1
    • Bug fix: fixed frozen TTY after running a backup job and going back to the shell.
    • Bug fix: fixed bug causing SEGFAULT on empty parameters. Now the default action is again --help. This bug was caused by the log file descriptor not having been initialized when xsibackup binary is invoked before parameters. It was caused by last update creating a log file even when run in an interactive shell.
    • Improvement: added GUI support for remote local targets, namely: local targets in remote hosts for delegated jobs.
    • Improvement: Swaks e-mail client has been replaced by classic sendmail module in the ./bin folder and by a cURL based e-mail client. cURL is default, you can change to sendmail via the --smtp-client=sendmail argument. This is all transparent to the user, you don't need to change anything in your jobs, is some cases the SMTP port would need to be changed if the e-mail server would offer TLS but no STARTTLS.
    • Improvement: reduced appliance size and footprint.

  • ©XSIBackup-App 1.1.0.0 (current)
    • This new big release is all about parallelization. Up until now we offered ©XSIBackup-DC as a local service tool that you could run in some ©ESXi host. If you wanted to manage multiple hosts you had to configure each host independently.

      To solve the need to manage multiple hosts from one centralized point of management we created ©XSIBackup-App, still all data to be backed up has to go through the appliance, which requires big backup time windows when you have many VMs to backup.

      In ©XSIBackup-App 1.1.0.0 we add a new argument: --delegate. This argument allows the possibility to delegate the backup job to the ©ESXi host hosting the virtual machines to be backed up in such way that it is the very host that sends the data to the backup backend. When a job is delegated ©XSIBackup-App will only receive the output to be stored in the logs dir as ./var/log/a.b.c.d_xsibackup.log, where a.b.c.d is the IP of the host where the job is run.
    • Improvement: added --delegate argument. This new argument allows to delegate the backup job to the ©ESXi host so that it takes care to backup the VMs to the backup target. In this first version only backups to targets over IP can be delegated through the GUI. You can achieve delegation of local backups by editing the backup job manually. Delegation also has a constraint, it installs the service binaries to the /scratch/XSI/XSIBackup-DC in the remote hosts, thus you need a properly configured scratch volume in the ©ESXi servers. This /scratch volume is created by default by the ©ESXi installer but in cases where you are using a manufacturer customized version or in flash card installations you may not have one.
    • Improvement: removed locking of backup repository to allow parallel backups.
    • Improvement: reduced appliance size and footprint.

  • ©XSIBackup-App 1.0.1.3. download
    • Bug fix: when the sysadmin deletes some VM folder but the VM is not unregistered from the inventory a persistent and ubiquitous message stating: Skipping invalid VM 'N' bubbles up from every shell command. This message wasn't captured at some points, causing segfaults in some cases. Please, note that conveniently administered hosts will not be hit by the bug.
    • Bug fix: SSHFS reconnection would not work automatically when some ©ESXi or Linux host would be rebooted.
    • Bug fix: a short time out in the GUI at the time to run a backup can result in an error stating the backup can't be made when it's just the progress bar that doesn't load due to reaching the time out. The time out was increased and will allow to be user set for extreme cases. The same job will work well in the command line.
      Now that the software allows Linux backups, if you try to backup many files, like a full Linux FS with over 50.000 files, the backup may take much more time to start outputting progresss information, as collecting the file info may take a while, it's not as fast as collecting just a few VM constituent files.
    • Improvement: now ©XSIBackup can detect a CBT reset due to a hard reboot or a power outage and retake the CBT sequence without manual intervention from part of the user.
    • Improvement: added --prev-script and --post-script arguments for Linux backups. The allow to run a script in the backup host previous to a job, like some DB dump and to run another script after the job has finished.
    • Improvement: support for --prev-script and --post-script arguments in the GUI (only Linux backup).

  • ©XSIBackup-App 1.0.1.2
    • Bug fix: the progress file could be garbled under some circumstances making the GUI progress to remain stuck at 99% when the job had already finished.
    • Improvement: added option to upgrade the appliance by calling the xsibackup-update.sh script from the config section of the GUI, it just goes out to the shell for better readability and interaction with the user.

  • ©XSIBackup-App 1.0.1.1
    • Bug fix: segfault would occur when an unregistered VM would be passed in a chain of comma separated VMs.
    • Improvement: added support to backup reading a directory array from a file to backup a series of Linux folders.

  • ©XSIBackup-App 1.0.1.0
    • Bug fix: fixed bug in --pruning action. This is is due to differences in the 'find' binary implemetation of ©ESXi with regards to Linux.
    • Improvement: If some remote replica dir is deleted partially, per instance, if you delete some -flat.vmdk file but you don't delete the .map directory containing the data definitions, subsequent jobs running on the same remote dir will result in data loss, as the client will believe the files defined by the .blocklog files inside the .map dir do exist and that they contain the data defined in the map.
      Some versions of ©ESXi do just that when you remove some VM from disk. The whole VM folder is not removed as it should happen and an undetermined number of files remain in the dir. Thus when you remove some VM do make sure that the whole VM dir is wiped from the disk.
      The fix consists in increasing checks in the replica structure to detect missing files.
    • Improvement: you can now connect to Linux servers and backup and replicate their data.
    • Improvement: added option to manually empty TMP folders from the GUI.
    • Improvement: added --remove-all-snapshots argument to the GUI options.

  • ©XSIBackup-App 1.0.0.10
    • Bug fix: fixed bug that would consider two IPs of backup hosts, being one contained within another to be taken by the same one.

  • ©XSIBackup-App 1.0.0.9
    • Improvement: GUI was updated to generate --backup-host arguments in the format user@a.b.c.d:port. Previously existing arguments with format --backup-host=a.b.c.d should be automatically converted to the new format by reading the entry in the /etc/fstab file when loading the backup job in the GUI. This new syntax allows to use different user names to connect to the ©ESXi hosts and the backup backends.
    • Improvement: the xsibackup binary (2.0.0.9) has been improved in regards to error reporting. Now there are two categories: warnings and errors. Warnings do not halt the backup/replica process, they are still written to the error.log file. Errors may halt the backup or replica process. Both are reported in the e-mail report, up to 10 entries. To see more revise the error.log file.

  • ©XSIBackup-App 1.0.0.8
    • Bug fix: fixed issues parsing the license files. Since ©XSIBackup-DC 1.7.0.5 the license files of the local ©ESXi service and the appliance are totally compatible and interchangeable. You can use any number of instances of the appliance or the DC edition with one single key.
    • Bug fix: fixed formatting of long named files in the console output to fit the screen.
    • Bug fix: old snapshot files are now skipped.

  • ©XSIBackup-App 1.0.0.7
    • Improvement: support for nvme disk type.
    • Improvement: added new 'xsi-update' utility to the ©XSIBackup-App command line to update the ©XSIBackup components without having to redownload the whole appliance. This service will only work with client registered accounts.
    • Improvement: now you can pass a user name in the --backup-host argument (normally root) to differentiate the backup host user from the remote backup server one. Until now the same user would be used, which forced to use 'root' almost in every situation. Now you can create more complex jobs in the appliance and adapt to backup servers that don't have an active 'root' account, like VPSs or corporte backup accounts. You could use user 'joe' to save your backups to joe@192.168.33.201:22:/home/joe/backups/repos/repo01 and user root to grab the data from ©ESXi server at 10.0.0.101 (--backup-host=root@10.0.0.1:22).

  • ©XSIBackup-App 1.0.0.6
    • Bug fix: fixed adding and formatting local virtual or RAW disks attached to the appliance from the GUI. Before they were shown but all operations would fail.
    • Bug fix: added warning when trying to enable CBT for a VM without having specified the backup host. Nothing was shown before, but the credits and program termination.

  • ©XSIBackup-App 1.0.0.5
    • Bug fix: removed option to autoregister VMs when using local paths, as it would raise an error. In the context of the appliance VMs can't be autoregistered in local paths, as it isn't an ©ESXi server. You can do so by replicating to any ©ESXi host over IP added as a linked server. Adding some ©ESXi box as an SSHFS mount makes no sense, as it would be the same as doing it via IP, but much slower.
    • Improvement: validation of fields in the network configuration screen of the GUI.

  • ©XSIBackup-App 1.0.0.4
    • Bug fix: --options argument would not work.
    • Improvement: automatic removal of backup snapshot .vmsn files that would end up stuffing the replica folder.

  • ©XSIBackup-App 1.0.0.3
    • Bug fix: bug was fixed in setting fixed address though the GUI.
    • Improvement: optimized indexing of meta-data for faster lookup. You will notice this in very big VMs, over 1 TB of data, Windows guests in special.

  • ©XSIBackup-App 1.0.0.2
    • Improvement: size of root partition extended to 16.00GB from 8.00GB. Some bigger disks over 10TB could generate an amount of metadata that would not fit in the available tmp space

  • ©XSIBackup-App 1.0.0.1
    • Improvement: network configuration added to the ncurses GUI.
    • Improvement: keyboard map configuration added to the ncurses GUI.

  • ©XSIBackup-App 1.0.0.0
    • Improvement: first production version.