yeh when i was in 6th form i had to use visual basic....it sucks, and it has put behind now at uni cos most of the other people on my course (computer science) have experience with c and c++

Thanks jonhewer

I'll have a mess around with the code to get it to work

no problem

would you mind posting ur entire script once complete, it looks handy

Be happy to post it, hopefully have it finished by the weekend, just will depend on study and work this weekend.

Hi

This message is mostly intended for tomj88 or anyone who has grabbed my whole script.....i have come across a small problem with the mysqldump command:

I took this code directly from a guide to backing up a mysql db, and even tho I was specifying the password in the command, I was still being prompted for it. I figured this was because I had been using the 'root' mysql user, but infact this is not the case. I have changed the syntax of this command to:

And it now works without prompting for the password.

Cheers
Jon

Thanks for that... another solution is to set up a user with very basic privileges. For exam, you database is called site, then you have a user called site that only has select privileges on that table. You can do this by opening up mysql at the command line and typing:
GRANT select ON site.* TO 'site'@'localhost';
You could make it so this user can do anything he/she likes on that database (such as select, insert, drop) by going:
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON site.* TO 'site'@'localhost';
If you restrict the users as much as possible, atleast you won't accidently delete your database when running a php script, or be as vunerable to mysql injection attacks for example.

i have done this in fact

i was just using root during development just because it was easier, but now that i have implemented my php & mysql application, i have set up a special mysql account for this

Heres the script, not too sure if the deleting old files works. To get the right 'cdrecord dev=ATAPI:0,0,0 just run at the command line:

cdrecord dev=ATAPI -scanbus

You should get something similar to this:

scsibus0:
0,0,0 0) 'Slimtype' 'COMBO SOSC-2483K' 'KCK2' Removable CD-ROM
0,1,0 1) *
0,2,0 2) *
0,3,0 3) *
0,4,0 4) *
0,5,0 5) *
0,6,0 6) *
0,7,0 7) *


#!/bin/sh

Backup_Dirs="/home/bill/mail" # eg. /etc /usr/local /opt /var /root /boot note: you can have multiple directories seperate by a space
Backup_Dest_Dir=/tmp/backup
Backup_Date=`date +%b%d%Y`
Speed=8 # Use best speed for CD-R/RW disks on YOUR system

echo "StartingBackup"

# Check to see of backup directory exists, if not then create it

if [ ! -d $Backup_Dest_Dir ]; then
mkdir $Backup_Dest_Dir
else
echo "Backup Directory already exists"
fi

echo "Backup Date: $Backup_Date" > $Backup_Dest_Dir/backup-$Backup_Date.log
echo "Backup Directories: $Backup_Dirs" >> $Backup_Dest_Dir/backup-$Backup_Date.log
echo "" >> $Backup_Dest_Dir/backup-$Backup_Date.log
echo "Files backed-up:" >> $Backup_Dest_Dir/backup-$Backup_Date.log

# Create tar file with todays Month Day Year prepended for easy identification

tar -cvzf $Backup_Dest_Dir/backup-$Backup_Date.tar.gz $Backup_Dirs >> $Backup_Dest_Dir/backup-$Backup_Date.log

echo "Created backup-$Backup_Date.img including log file"

# Create a image that can be written to writeable media

mkisofs -r -o $Backup_Dest_Dir/backup-$Backup_Date.img $Backup_Dest_Dir/backup-$Backup_Date.tar.gz $Backup_Dest_Dir/backup-$Backup_Date.log

# Check size of directory to burn in MB

Size=`du -m $Backup_Dest_Dir/backup-$Backup_Date.img | cut -c 1-3`

if [ $Size -lt 680 ];then
echo "Size of backup-$Backup_Date.img is $Size MB, OK to Burn"
else
echo "Size of backup-$Backup_Date.img too Large to burn too CD-R....Maybe time for DvD Burner"
exit 1
fi

# Burn the CD-RW

echo "Burning back-up to disc."

cdrecord dev=ATAPI:0,0,0 -v -eject fs=64M driveropts=burnproof speed=$Speed -tao $Backup_Dest_Dir/backup-$Backup_Date.img

echo "Successfully backed-up backup-$Backup_Date.img to cd-r/rw"

# Lets check for backups and log files older than 7 days and delete them

find /tmp/backup -name "backup-*" -mtime +7 -exec rm -v '{}' \;

exit 0

Thanks for that, might start using it myself... I need to start backing up more regularly...

cheers fotoguy!