Johannes Buchner

Everyone says, backups are important, but how do you backup? And have you ever tried replaying a backup?

My backup plan:
- Working copy on my laptop
- Compressed archive is created every week. I delete old backups infrequently.
- Infrequent rsync of working copy (filtered) to USB stick.
- rsync of working copy (filtered) to the university servers.
- Compressed archive copied to the university server.

I would say I’m quite secure …

Crontab entry: 0 */4 * * * cd backup && sh backup2.sh

#!/bin/bash
PARENT=/mnt/daten/Daten/
DIR=Studium/
SELDOMCHANGE='*.zip *.ps *.pdf *.rar *.tar.* *.jpg *.gif *.png'
BORING='*.log *.out *.xac *~'
LARGESERVER=a0123456@login.unet.univie.ac.at
SMALLSERVER=e0123456@stud4.tuwien.ac.at
SERVERS="$LARGESERVER $SMALLSERVER"
cd $PARENT
# part A:
# compress some file types that change seldom and send them over once a month
# that would be zip, ps, pdf, rar, tars, images,
FILENAME=Sicherungen/Full/seldom-changed-types-$(date +%W).tar.bz2
TARGETSERVERDIR=$LARGESERVER:Sicherungen/Full/
# create archive if it doesn't exist yet
[ -s $FILENAME ] || \
echo 'creating weekly archive' &&
find Studium -type f $( for i in $SELDOMCHANGE ; do echo "-iname" "$i" "-or"; done) -false | \
tar --create --bzip2 "--verbose" "--files-from=-" "--file=$FILENAME"
# lets sync that to the server
# commented out: files ~ 500MB :-(
#echo 'rsyncing weekly archive to server'
#rsync $FILENAME $TARGETSERVERDIR
# part b
# rsync the others
#
for SERVER in $SERVERS
do
echo 'rsyncing with ' $SERVER
TARGETSERVERDIR=$SERVER:Sicherungen/Studium/
for i in $SELDOMCHANGE $BORING; do echo "- $i"; done | \
rsync -az --checksum --delete-excluded --exclude-from=- $PARENT/$DIR $TARGETSERVERDIR
done
echo 'backup done.'