I will show you how to daily backup 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 remove the backups older than 90 days. You need to suply 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 counts with ~/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 automagically, 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