BBACKUPCTL(8)

🎀 bbackupctl — control the Box Backup client daemon 🎀

okay bestie, welcome to bbackupctl, section 8 of the manual ✨ this is the little remote control you use to poke a running bbackupd daemon on a client machine, and honestly? it's giving main character energy for your backups 💅

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

bbackupctl [-q] [-c config-file] command

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💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

So here's the vibe: bbackupctl sends commands to a running bbackupd daemon on a client machine. It can force an immediate backup, tell the daemon to reload its configuration files, or stop the daemon entirely. And if bbackupd is configured in snapshot mode, it will not back up automatically — which means bbackupctl is literally the only way to tell it when to start a backup. no cap. 🫶

The communication with the bbackupd daemon happens over a local socket (not over the network, bestie, it's a local thing).

⚠️ okay this part matters: some platforms (notably Windows) can't determine if the user connecting on this socket has the correct credentials to execute the commands. On those platforms, ANY local user can interfere with bbackupd. 😭 To avoid this, remove the CommandSocket option from bbackupd.conf, which will also disable bbackupctl. See the Client Configuration page for more information.

bbackupctl needs to read the bbackupd configuration file to find out the name of the CommandSocket. So if you have to tell bbackupd where to find the configuration file, you will have to tell bbackupctl as well — they're a package deal, iykyk 💞

The default on Unix systems is usually /etc/box/bbackupd.conf. On Windows systems, it's bbackupd.conf in the same directory where bbackupd.exe is located. If bbackupctl cannot find or read the configuration file, it will log an error message and exit. 🚪

bbackupctl usually writes error messages to the console and the system logs. So if it's not doing what you expect, please check these outputs first of all. like, first. before anything else. 🙈

• -q — Run in quiet mode. 🤫
• -c config-file — Specify configuration file.

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🌈 Commands 🌈

The following commands are available in bbackupctl:

• terminate — This command cleanly shuts down bbackupd. This is better than killing or terminating it any other way. periodt. 👑
• reload — Causes the bbackupd daemon to re-read all its configuration files. Equivalent to kill -HUP. 🔄
• sync — Initiates a backup. If no files need to be backed up, no connection will be made to the server. 🦋
• force-sync — Initiates a backup, even if the SyncAllowScript says that no backup should run now. 💥
• wait-for-sync — Passively waits until the next backup starts of its own accord, and then terminates. ⏳
• wait-for-end — Passively waits until the next backup starts of its own accord and finishes, and then terminates. 🌙
• sync-and-wait — Initiates a backup, waits for it to finish, and then terminates. ✨

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🍓 FILES 🍓

/etc/box/bbackupd.conf

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💜 SEE ALSO 💜

bbackupd.conf(5), bbackupd-config(8), bbackupctl(8)

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🌟 AUTHORS 🌟

• Ben Summers
• Per Thomsen
• James O'Gorman

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okay that's the whole page, bestie, you ate it 💅 this was Box Backup 0.11, dated 06/06/2024 — go forth and control your daemon, slay 🎀✨