Not understanding warm spare wiki

Hello all! This is my first post and I am new to FreePBX. I found the warm spare wiki here: wiki.freepbx.org/display/FPG/Warm+Spare+Setup
Seems straight forward, I created the key for two virtual test systems as root and I can use “ssh -i /home/asterisk/.ssh/id_rsa root@PrimaryServerIP” to log into the primary with no password.
When creating the backup job SSH server, I’m gathering that the “key” field is the key on the warm spare? My biggest question is the path, what path? The info button says “path on remote server” and the wiki says “Path on the remote server where files are stored”. What path? Path to backup data? Then that leads me into another question… Am I pulling the data into the warm spare from the live primary system? Or, am I pulling the data into the warm spare from backup data stored on the primary system? If the latter I would need a backup on the primary system first, eh?

When I run the backup job on the warm spare with no path, I get an error after a bit:

Initializing Backup 2
Connecting to remote server…
ssh: connect to host 10.xxx.xx.155 port 22: Connection timed out
Something went wrong when connecting to remote server. Aborting!

Which is odd, because I can connect to it with the SSH key.
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
Chris

Are you following this?

https://wiki.freepbx.org/plugins/servlet/mobile?contentId=26509417#content/view/26509417

These instructions work without errors just setup another pair of servers last week following these instructions without issue.

Yes Sir, you’ve posted the mobile version of the link I referenced above. What is the “path” when setting up the SSH server? What files?

No sure your question. Can you possibly reference the area of the wiki that your stuck at?? Maybe that would help me understand.

We are going to define the following fields for this server:

Server Name - A name for this server. In our example we could call it “Primary PBX."
Description - A description or notes to help you identify this server.
Hostname - The IP address or FQDN of the primary server.
Port - By default we use port 22 for SSH.
Username - The SSH username. In our example we would enter “root” because it is the username we set up for our share keys.
Key - This is the location of the private SSH key that we created earlier. In our example it is /home/asterisk/.ssh/id_rsa
Path - Path on the remote server where files are stored.

What is “Path”?

Would not reasonably be the path you chose for your backup?, the legacy one would be /var/lib/asterisk/backup/* the current default one /var/spool/asterisk/backup/the_name_of_your_backup/

Don’t put anything into that field. It will backup the files and place them in the correct location.

@dicko so it IS pulling from backup data files on the primary system, and not the LIVE system?

@frankb OK, I tried leaving that field blank. I still get the error listed above. I can SSH into the primary from the warm spare with no password via the key… Maybe I should start again clean and try all over.

Gosh Chris I’m sorry but I’m not sure. I havnt experienced any problem. Yes I would start over from scratch and give it another go.

OK. I rebuilt the job. Same thing. Should I already have backup data on the primary? Are there any log files I can check to see what is going on? Thanks!

Chris
If you would like to PM me with screen shots of your backup config screens I would be happy to compare with my settings.

@frankb thank you for that offer. I appreciate it. I ended up completely deleting/removing all previous configuration regarding the warm spare and started over. I generated a new key and started completely over and it just worked. I left the “path” empty. I did need to put “local storage” in for the storage servers, the job wouldn’t run otherwise.

I’ve got an issue though. Is there any way to exclude pulling any trunk info from the primary? Our SIP carrier will re-route calls to a different trunk automatically that is configured on the warm spare. The config completely erases other trunk config on the warm spare and overwrites it with the primary config. Can I stop that from happening? Also, even though I tell the backup job to “disable registered trunks”, it doesn’t.

As far as I know the only way you could possibly do that would be somehow scripting it and have the backup kick off the script for you once it has completed.

I have no knowledge of how to put a crispy like that together however.