The following assumes that you are installing the burp server from source.
You need to compile burp on a unix-based operating system first. Make sure that you have openssl, zlib, librsync, and uthash libraries and development packages installed.
Debian/Ubuntu: apt-get install make pkg-config check g++ \ librsync-dev libz-dev libssl-dev uthash-dev
RHEL or CentOS 7: yum install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm yum install make gcc gcc-c++ bzip2 pkgconfig \ librsync-devel libzip-devel openssl-devel uthash-devel \ libacl-devel ncurses-devel openssl-perl libcap-devel
RHEL or Centos 8: dnf install epel-release dnf --enablerepo=PowerTools list uthash-devel dnf install make gcc librsync-devel openssl-devel libacl-devel \ ncurses-devel zlib-devel
After this point, make sure you are standing in the burp source directory.
If you are taking the source directly from git: Install these extra packages with your distribution's package manager: autoconf automake libtool autoreconf -vif
Now run the configure script, noting that if you are using automake >= 1.16.1, you may need to add '--disable-dependency-tracking': ./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc/burp --localstatedir=/var
Then run: make
All being well, burp will compile successfully. Install it as root: make install
Now install configuration files. Note that this will overwrite existing configuration files in /etc/burp, so you will probably not want to run this if you have an existing burp installation: make install-configs
Start the burp server: burp -c /etc/burp/burp-server.conf
By default, the server will fork into the background and run as a daemon. To stay in the foreground, add the '-F' option. The first time that the server runs, its startup will be a slower than usual because it needs to generate its SSL certificates. However, this will probably only be noticeable on old machines.
The server is now ready for clients to connect to it.
If you are going to run the client on the same machine on which you installed the server, the client will already be installed because the client is built into the same binary (the behaviour of the binary depends upon the configuration file that is given to it). Otherwise, you can either go through the 'configure/make/make install' sequence on the client machine, or get burp via your distribution's package manager.
The example client configuration file is /etc/burp/burp.conf. It will backup /home by default.
You can either force a backup by hand: burp -a b
Or add a regular cron job like the following to /etc/cron.d/burp (or equivalent). This makes the client ask the server every twenty minutes whether it is yet time for a new backup. It is probably a good idea to change the numbers for each client, in order to spread the load a bit: MAILTO= 7,27,47 root /usr/sbin/burp -a t
Whether or not an instance of the client results in an actual backup depends upon the timer settings in the server config files.
Pick the 32-bit or 64-bit Burp installer as appropriate - visit http://burp.grke.org/ to find one of them.
If you need to compile one yourself, instructions can be found at src/win32/README in the source package.
The Windows installer will ask you for the address of your server, the client name, and the client password. Burp will then install its files to: C:/Program Files/Burp (Note that the "C:/Program Files/" part may differ, depending on Windows' language settings). If you need to change client configuration settings, the file can be found at: C:/Program Files/Burp/burp.conf It will be configured to backup "C:/Users", if it existed at installation time, or otherwise "C:/Documents and Settings".
A Windows Scheduler task will have been installed and will be configured to run every 20 minutes from the time of the installation. Whether or not this results in an actual backup depends upon the timer settings in the server config files.
To force a backup by hand, start the burp client from within its directory: cd "C:\Program Files\Burp\bin" burp.exe -a b If you are running Windows 7, you might need to start the command prompt with "Run as Administrator".
The installation on a Mac is performed via Homebrew (http://brew.sh). After installing Homebrew, with an admin account you just have to open a Terminal and type the command: brew install burp
Burp will be installed in the subdirectories of /usr/local (see Homebrew website for details on the subdirectories).
You'll then have to edit the client configuration file: /usr/local/etc/burp/burp.conf
At the minimum, you'll have to change the line: include = /home to something like: include = /Users
For ansible roles to manage burp, please see: https://github.com/grke/burp/wiki/automated-deploy-and-maintenance
For more help, see the man page - type 'man burp'.