Backup setup
 

One thing I would like to be able to do is to set up my pc to back up automatically for me all of the files I have in my /opt/ directory and add them to my other hard disk on a partition I will create called backup. I will call the partition backup so it will be at /usr/backup

I have been putting programs in here before they have been compiled onto the system. I have created a directory called system here too. I use this to keep in my files downloaded such as kernel sources previously downloaded and files for the system from intel, creative soundblaster drivers.

If I have got quite a bit of room on the drive is it a good idea to backup some of my other os files too?? which ones do you recommend I add to this backup?

I believe i should be using cron or the crontabs is that true?? If so which one? bearing in mind I have got KDE3.1, Slack 9.1.

Thanks guys for the help it will be a thinhg off my mind if I can automate backups of my data like I used to do in windows.

Rob

Here is an example setup which I have......

Creating a cron job to backup the /home directory every day at 11:00pm.

mkdir -p /mnt/backup
mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt/backup -t ext3

Add a line to fstab to mount it everytime you boot.
/dev/hdb1 /mnt/backup ext3 defaults 0 0

Make a file called /mnt/backup/backup.job
#!/bin/bash
filename=`date '+%m%d%y'`
tar -cvzf /mnt/backup/${filename}.tar.gz /home

Run these commands:
chmod +x /mnt/backup/backup.job
export EDITOR=vi
crontab /etc/crontab
crontab -e

Add a line to your personal crontab.....
00 23 * * * /mnt/backup/backup.job

Save the changes with the command: :wq!

Thanks Homey I will give it a shot

you said -

Make a file called /mnt/backup/backup.job
#!/bin/bash
filename=`date '+%m%d%y'`
tar -cvzf /mnt/backup/${filename}.tar.gz /home

What are variables for filename = (the syntax for hostname,time etc)

Run these commands:
chmod +x /mnt/backup/backup.job
export EDITOR=vi
crontab /etc/crontab
crontab -e

What are you doing in lines 3-5 here?

Add a line to your personal crontab.....
00 23 * * * /mnt/backup/backup.job

I guess 00 06 * * * /mnt/backup/backup.job

is for 6am but what are the other 00's and ***'s for and where is my personal crontab? cron.daily, cron.monthly? etc

filename=`date '+%m%d%y'
This gives the current date to the filename so you can keep track of them.

chmod +x /mnt/backup/backup.job
This makes the backup.job executable so cron can run it.

export EDITOR=vi
crontab /etc/crontab
crontab -e
This just makes it automatically open the vi editor when you make the next statement. You only need to do this when setting it up.

I guess 00 06 * * * /mnt/backup/backup.job

Yep, that's for 6am and "00" is for no minutes. If you had a * in the minutes column, the job would run every minute of the 6am hour. :(

"is for 6am but what are the other 00's and ***'s for and where is my personal crontab? cron.daily, cron.monthly? etc"

The other *'s are for day, week and month
This just one way of doing things, as usual in Linux, you can use other methods. One is to put the script into the /etc/cron.hour folder and then edit the /etc/crontab to include the 06 line.
You also can set it up using Webmin.

I see. It is much faster to just use the ***'s to specify when you want the jobs doing then you dont have to mess about with the other cron folders.

Yep, that just says to run the job at

00 Minutes, 6am hour, every day, every week and every month.

I know this is an old thread but I'd hate to start a new one. How do i setup this up to overwrite each previous backup?

Well if you place these in their own directory, just add a rm -rf /path/to/file.tar.gz

Or why not keep an actual retention of a week with something like:

find /path/to/*.tar.gz -t file -mtime +7 -exec rm -rf {} \;

Don't mount your backup directory in /usr. /usr is for read-only data according to the filesystem hierarchy standard.

If you only temporarily mount the device (i.e. while making or restoring from backups), mount it at /mnt, Else the proper place is probably /var/backups.