Backup pfsense firewall (via SSH) using ONE script

I know there are other methods out there to backup a pfsense config. These do work but I'm just not a fan of relying on the gui to perform my config backups. Plus, SSH is my encrypted session of choice because its secure, flexible and available.

Once again I'm using Fabric to perform this backup. If you haven't already done it, go to the effort of setting up Fabric on your platform of choice...you won't regret it. If you want to do interesting things with Fabric then get warmed up on your python at Codecadamy (https://www.codecademy.com/tracks/python).

This script uses an interactive prompt for you to enter the password, but you can simply provide the password either in the script itself (shame shame) or via another secure method.

Backups are pulled back to the system running the script into a directory named 'my_pfsense_backups' and are given a directory for each day. You can tweak this to suit your needs.

       

#!/usr/bin/python
#
# Designed and tested on pfsense v2.2
#
import urllib2, base64, getpass, json, re, sys, os
from fabric.api import *
from datetime import datetime
#
myname = ('root')
# NOTE: pfsense uses root user that has same password as admin - required for sftp file access
theList = ['pfsense1.company.com','pfsense2.company.com']
#
i = datetime.now()
now_is = i.strftime('%Y%m%d-%H%M%S')
today_is = i.strftime('%Y%m%d')
print now_is
#
print ('')
print ('Username is ' + myname)
pw = getpass.getpass()
print ('')
#
how_many = len(theList)
#
print("This will backup " + str(how_many) + " systems:\n")
print (theList)
print ('')
#
env.user = myname
env.hosts = theList
env.password = pw
#
#@parallel(pool_size=5)
#
# generate the backup file on the pfsense system itself, this will take some time
def generate_and_pull_backup():
        env.warn_only = True
#       run( "8", shell=False )
        backup_command_output = run( "/etc/rc.create_full_backup", shell=False )
# parse the output of the create_full_backup command
        file_generated_full_path = backup_command_output.rsplit(None, 1)[-1]
        filename_generated = file_generated_full_path.split('/')[-1]
# pull the backup home to me
        get("%s" % file_generated_full_path,"./my_pfsense_backups/%s/%s-%s" % (today_is,env.host,filename_generated))
# NOTE: configs can be restored via /etc/rc.restore_full_backup
#
# delete config backup just generated so disk does not fill
        run( "rm -f %s" % file_generated_full_path, shell=False )
#
if __name__ == '__main__':
        execute(generate_and_pull_backup)
       
 

Hope you enjoy this as much as I have! Backing up my pfsense systems has always been far too manual and problem prone so I'm looking forward to putting that behind me.