Further improved incremenatl backupscript for Unix, Linux and Mac OS X+ systems

[sinisterporpoise]

 You can use crontab -e to run the script that come below this. Just add this line to it:

00  0  *  *   *   /home/<yourhomedir>/Downloads/backup.sh  
# This assumes you have left the file in your Downloads folder instead of moving it to a more appropriate place.
# The hashtag is just  makes a line a comment in Linux/Unix scripts. (Mac OS X is Unix.)


Now, exit out of Crontab. On my Linux systems, Crontab uses nano, but many other Linux/Unix distributions use vi/vim.

Here is the script if you want to copy and paste it and put it itno a more convenient directory:

!/bin/bash

 

 

cat << EOF

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Sinister Porpoise Computing Backup Script

Test script for creating multiple

backup files.

 

Lara Landis

11/10/2017

Personal Bash Script

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

EOF

 

echo "Now creating backup files..."

 

x=1

y=1 

 

if [[ -f "backup.tar.gz" ]]; then

    x=1

    while [ x==1 ]

    do

    if [[ -f "backup${y}.tar.gz" ]]; then

y=$((y+1))

echo  $y

else

tar -czvf --exclude=*.tar.gz "backup${y}.tar.gz" /home

x=0

fi

   done

else

tar -cvzf --exclude=*.tar.gz "backup.tar.gz" /home

fi

 

How does this differ from the previous versions?  As written, it will only back up the home directories. For entire hard drive backups, simply switch it to the /home line to / .  First, it creates multiple incremental backups.  Second, unlike the previous versions, it excludes files that have been compressed into a tarball, as long as they have the .tar.gz extensions.  Is this better than Time Machine for Mac users? No, probably not. However, it is a handy backup for it.