Introduction

This is an addon script for Rsnapshot to provide a much more user-friendly output format. This output format is designed to be a much closer match to the NetApp style .snapshot directories, while being even more user friendly by providing timestamps in the directory names.

This script can either be run standalone, or integrated with rsnapshot itself using the cmd_postexec configuration option.

Example Usage

Given an input directory structure that looks like this:

/rsnapshot/hourly.0/machine1.example.com/
/rsnapshot/hourly.0/machine2.example.com/
/rsnapshot/hourly.1/machine1.example.com/
/rsnapshot/hourly.1/machine2.example.com/
/rsnapshot/hourly.2/machine1.example.com/
/rsnapshot/hourly.2/machine2.example.com/
/rsnapshot/hourly.3/machine1.example.com/
/rsnapshot/hourly.3/machine2.example.com/
/rsnapshot/hourly.4/machine1.example.com/
/rsnapshot/hourly.4/machine2.example.com/
/rsnapshot/hourly.5/machine1.example.com/
/rsnapshot/hourly.5/machine2.example.com/

/rsnapshot/daily.0/machine1.example.com/
/rsnapshot/daily.0/machine2.example.com/
/rsnapshot/daily.1/machine1.example.com/
/rsnapshot/daily.1/machine2.example.com/

You can run the script like this:

$ prettify.py -i /rsnapshot -o /rsnapshot/mount

And you will end up with an output structure of symbolic links, named using the timestamp of each snapshot:

/rsnapshot/mount/machine1.example.com/snapshot.2017.01.01T12:00:00 -> /rsnapshot/daily.1/machine1.example.com
/rsnapshot/mount/machine1.example.com/snapshot.2017.01.02T12:00:00 -> /rsnapshot/daily.0/machine1.example.com
/rsnapshot/mount/machine1.example.com/snapshot.2017.01.03T00:00:00 -> /rsnapshot/hourly.5/machine1.example.com
/rsnapshot/mount/machine1.example.com/snapshot.2017.01.03T04:00:00 -> /rsnapshot/hourly.4/machine1.example.com
/rsnapshot/mount/machine1.example.com/snapshot.2017.01.03T08:00:00 -> /rsnapshot/hourly.3/machine1.example.com
/rsnapshot/mount/machine1.example.com/snapshot.2017.01.03T12:00:00 -> /rsnapshot/hourly.2/machine1.example.com
/rsnapshot/mount/machine1.example.com/snapshot.2017.01.03T16:00:00 -> /rsnapshot/hourly.1/machine1.example.com
/rsnapshot/mount/machine1.example.com/snapshot.2017.01.03T20:00:00 -> /rsnapshot/hourly.0/machine1.example.com

/rsnapshot/mount/machine2.example.com/snapshot.2017.01.01T12:00:00 -> /rsnapshot/daily.1/machine2.example.com
/rsnapshot/mount/machine2.example.com/snapshot.2017.01.02T12:00:00 -> /rsnapshot/daily.0/machine2.example.com
/rsnapshot/mount/machine2.example.com/snapshot.2017.01.03T00:00:00 -> /rsnapshot/hourly.5/machine2.example.com
/rsnapshot/mount/machine2.example.com/snapshot.2017.01.03T04:00:00 -> /rsnapshot/hourly.4/machine2.example.com
/rsnapshot/mount/machine2.example.com/snapshot.2017.01.03T08:00:00 -> /rsnapshot/hourly.3/machine2.example.com
/rsnapshot/mount/machine2.example.com/snapshot.2017.01.03T12:00:00 -> /rsnapshot/hourly.2/machine2.example.com
/rsnapshot/mount/machine2.example.com/snapshot.2017.01.03T16:00:00 -> /rsnapshot/hourly.1/machine2.example.com
/rsnapshot/mount/machine2.example.com/snapshot.2017.01.03T20:00:00 -> /rsnapshot/hourly.0/machine2.example.com

This makes it much easier to mount the individual snapshots from a remote machine over NFS. The improved directory structure also makes this much easier for users to navigate and understand.