Opinion

Quick post this week as I’m a little distracted by the impending weekend.

Here’s a script that I use to backup my Maildir. Normally I write my own, but I was feeling lazy. So in the interest of not re-inventing the wheel, I decided to copy one. Unfortunately, I forgot where I got it. Normally I’m good about attributing things that I copy/utilize. So, if this is your script, thank you! If you want attribution, please let me know.

This is just a bash script. It creates a xz’d tar file in my /home/nick/Archives directory/

First, check for input.’

#----script to backup files

if [ $# -lt 1 ]
then
   echo Usage: backup.sh Directory
   exit
fi

Next, create the date stamp.

JJJ=`date '+%d%m%y'`

This is the main loop. It processes for each in the attribute list ($#)

while [ $# -gt 0 ]
do

Print the directory we’re currently working on, then set the DIR variable to that directory’s path.

   echo $1
   DIR=$1

Truncate the directory path of the DIR variable

   MODDIR=`basename $DIR`

Verify the directory exists before doing anything

   #----check file exists
   if [ ! -d $DIR ]
   then
      echo Error: File \'$MODDIR\' not found!!

Check to see if the destination folder exists. This is where I hard coded it to be /home/user/Archives. If it doesn’t, create the backup locally.

   else
      if [ -d ~/Archives ]
      then
        DESTTAR=~/Archives/$MODDIR.$JJJ.tar.xz
      else
        DESTTAR=$MODDIR.$JJJ.tar.xz
      fi

Check to see of the destination file exists. If it does, complain and exit.

    if [ -d $DESTTAR ]
        then
                echo Error: File \'$DESTTAR\' already exists!!
                exit 0

Tar the archive using the xz compression method (the “J” attribute in the tar command)

    fi
      tar -cJf $DESTTAR $DIR
   fi
   shift
done

And we’re done! At some point I’ll add an auto-pruning portion to the script.

I just stick the script in my personal bin folder, make it executable, edit my crontab and put an entry in it pointing to my Maildir, and I get nightlly backups of all my mail.