Simple backup copying to another HDD

Message

build · #1 Post by **build** » 2006-07-25 13:04

G'day All,
I've been looking around at backup utilities like Mondo but realised what I want to do probably has a simpler answer. All I want to to is copy files from /home that have changed since the last backup to another drive mounted as /home.bak.

Cron? all suggestions appreciated.

Thanks,
build

lacek · #2 Post by **lacek** » 2006-07-25 14:25

It can be done with a script like this:

Code: Select all

cd /home
    for file in `find . -mindepth 1 -newer /home.bak`; do
    cp -r $file /home.bak/
done

or this way:

Code: Select all

cd /home
find . -mindepth 1 -newer /home.bak -exec cp -r \{\} /home.bak \;

These examples take granted you never touch /home.bak by hand, I mean, you don't create a file in it, and you don't edit any files in it. If you do, it won't work, because it copies all files which was changed later than the /home.bak directory. If you touch the directory by changing one of the files in it, these will fail.
See the man page of find for more info and for the possible switches and tests.

Grifter · #3 Post by **Grifter** » 2006-07-25 15:41

apt-get install rsync, man rsync

build · #4 Post by **build** » 2006-07-28 06:19

Thanks to you both. I like both answers but don't fully comprehend the bash.

With rsync is it really as simple as: # rsync -r /home/ /home.bak

looks far too easy.
(this R3.1 debian is really getting far tooo easy, not scary geeky stuff at all

cheers
build

build · #5 Post by **build** » 2006-07-29 22:44

G'day All,
I ended up with a crontab entry of: 0 * * * * rsync -rogv --delete /home/ /home.bak to back up every hour.

The -r being recursive, -o & -g to preserve owner and group, the -v for verbose and --delete to delete obsolete files. However the -v is not providing a list of files printed to the screen and syslog has only the cron entry. Where is the output of verbose to be found?

Thanking you in anticipation.

btw, is the crontab entry correct? Is there a better way of doing it? Is there any other options I should be using? Thx

sofasurfer · #6 Post by **sofasurfer** » 2006-07-31 05:43

I tried the command... # rsync -r /home/ /copyhome and I got a stream of messages... 'skipping non-regular file "<filename>".

What does this tell me.
The copy DID get put into my 2nd drive like I wanted.
Now, assuming this DID work right, the next time I run # rsync -r /home/ /copyhome, the /copyhome will be updated with everything that has changed and only everything that has changed, right?