I will show you how to create a daily backup of your Mikrotik configuration. This uses ssh, bash, and systemd-timer. The aim for this mini project is to be as simple as possible but it supports multiple target devices!

First of all, create the backup script (~/bin/mikrotik-backup.sh):

This script backs your Mikrotik up and then removes backups older than 90 days. You need to supply the device hostname and the directory where the backups will be saved.

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# Usage: ./mikrotik-backup <router-ip> <backup-dir>
ssh -4 $1 /export show-sensitive > $2/$1-$(date +"%Y%m%d%H%M%S").txt
find $2/ -name *.txt -type f -mtime +90 -exec rm '{}' \;

Then create your systemd oneshot service (~/.config/systemd/user/mikrotik-backup@.service):

This unit works with the ~/mikrotik_backup/ destination directory.

[Unit]
Description=Back the Mikrotik up
Wants=mikrotik-backup@.timer

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=%h/bin/mikrotik-backup.sh %i %h/mikrotik_backup/

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Lastly the systemd timer needs to be created (~/.config/systemd/user/mikrotik-backup@.timer):

The timer will be executed every day at 3:15.

[Unit]
Description=Back the Mikrotik up
Requires=mikrotik-backup@.service

[Timer]
Unit=mikrotik-backup@%i.service
OnCalendar=*-*-* 03:30:00

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

SSH

This script needs to be able to ssh to the Mikrotik automatically, e.g. try ssh gw.local /system/routerboard/print and it should not require any other input.

If your username differs from the Mikrotik’s username, just create ~/.ssh/config file with:

Host *.local
  User MikrotikAdmin

Enablement

  1. To backup gw.local machine, just run: systemctl --user enable --now mikrotik-backup@gw.local.timer

  2. You can inspect the timers by: systemctl --user list-timers

  3. To see if the script ended successfully, run: systemctl --user status mikrotik-backup@gw.local.service

And that’s it!

mikrotik  network