Adam's blog: Backing up the router configuration

Recently, I have been fond of with Mikrotik routers and their enterprise-grade RouterOS system. There is plenty of possible configuration, which gives me great freedom of choice in how I want my home network to operate. Because setting everything, including VPN, guest network and more may take quite a lot of time, it is a good idea to backup the configuration.

The idea

My idea is to have a scheduled script that will save the router configuration to a directory inside my self-hosted NextCloud instance. This will also save me the hassle with versioning the backups, as NextCloud itself takes care of this.

The backup on the router is saved to its disc, which is accessible trough SFTP protocol, while the NextCloud can be accessed through WebDAV. RClone is an open-source solution that can manage both.

The implementation

1. Create a new account and group on the router – config-backup. When creating the group, I have to make sure to check ssh, ftp, read, write, policy, test and sensitive permissions.

2. Add router entry to a ssh config on the machine on which will the scheduled script run:

   Host router
    HostName router
    User config-backup
    IdentityFile /secret/ssh_id_rsa
    IdentitiesOnly yes
    StrictHostKeyChecking yes
   

3. Create new RClone remote for the router using SFTP

   [router]
   type = sftp
   host = router
   user = config-backup
   disable_hashcheck = true
   key_file = /secret/ssh_id_rsa
   

4. Create new RClone remote for the NextCloud using WebDAV

   [adam-cloud]
   type = webdav
   url = https://cloud/remote.php/dav/files/Adam/
   vendor = nextcloud
   user = Adam
   pass = *****
   

5. Finally, combine all these setting inside a single Bash script

   #!/bin/bash
   ssh router -- /system/backup/save name=config.backup dont-encrypt=no password=123456 &&
   rclone copy router:/config.backup adam-cloud:/Archive/router-config/ &&
   ssh router -- /file/ remove config.backup
   

And that’s it. After running the Bash script, the router configuration backup is saved into my NextCloud.