Need help interpreting Backup Script

I really have 3 questions here.
1. What is the backup script at the bottom of this email doing?
2. How can I add folders to this, or should I be creating a new script for
the seperate folders? If I add more folders to the same script, the backup
time is bound to increase, so I figure it's a tradeoff between having
multiple scripts vs. time.
3. As it appears this script is already backing up /home/shared, what does
the script tell me in terms of where I can find the backup?

Here's a more detailed explanation of 1 and 2.

1. and 2. Being new to Linux, I am trying to add to a backup script that
already exists. However, before I do so, I'd like to know more about what
it's doing, and where things are going. What I want to backup is linux
directory /home/shared, which it is doing; but I'd also like to backup /home
so that each individual user folder can be backed up as well.

The way I understand it is like so: /home/shared is being backed up on a
daily? basis. Is this correct? Should I write another script based on this
one that will copy the /home/ directories minus the shared directory?
--------------------------------------------------
With that said, here's the script. The only things I've changed is the
username & password.

Thanks,
Eve

#!/bin/sh
#backup_main: simple backup routine to be used with samba and bash cp.
#this one simply copies an entire directory recursively to an smb mount.
#
#written by RKL - 7/17/2003
mount -t smbfs -o
username=username,password=password,workgroup=workgroup
//BACKUP/backup /mnt/backup
&>/root/backup_scripts/logs/`date
+"MOUNT-%y-%m-%d.log"`
if [ -f /mnt/backup/connected ]; then
rm -rf /mnt/backup/`date +"%A/"`
mkdir /mnt/backup/`date +"%A/"`
cp -r /home/shared/* /mnt/backup/`date +"%A/"`
1>/mnt/backup/logs/`date +"DAILY-%y-%m-%d.log"`
2>/mnt/backup/logs/`date +"DAILY-%y-%m-%d.err"`
umount /mnt/backup &>/root/backup_scripts/logs/`date
+"MOUNT-%y-%m-%d.log"`
fi

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Re: Need help interpreting Backup Script

At 02:47 PM 4/8/2004 -0400, Eve Atley wrote:

>I really have 3 questions here.
>1. What is the backup script at the bottom of this email doing?

See below, where I add line-by-line comments to the script itself.

>2. How can I add folders to this, or should I be creating a new script for
>the seperate folders? If I add more folders to the same script, the backup
>time is bound to increase, so I figure it's a tradeoff between having
>multiple scripts vs. time.

You figure right ... except, of course, that multiple scripts does not
reduce the total time for the backups, just splits it up into multiple,
separate jobs. (Actually, since more mounts and umounts would get done, the
separate-scripts method would increase the total time, but the effect
should be tiny.)

To back up additional directories (not "folders"; wrong jargon), you would
add more lines like the one that begins

cp -r /home/shared/* /mnt/backup/`date +"%A/"

You could do this by previously modifying the `date +"%A/" part so it was
different for the different backups, or you could add a piece to the path
(and to the earlier lines that delter, then create, the directory). For
example, you could change the above to read

cp -r /home/shared/* /mnt/backup/home/shared/`date +"%A/"

-OR- to read

cp -r /home/shared/* /mnt/backup/`date +"%A/"home/shared/

>3. As it appears this script is already backing up /home/shared, what does
>the script tell me in terms of where I can find the backup?

ON the samba share (//BACKUP/backup), wherever it might be, in a directory
whose name is constructed from the "date" command. Here, this is what I get:

ray@kuryakin:~$ echo `date +"%A/"`
Thursday/

Or you might simply modify the script to backup /home/* instead of
/home/shared/*

>Here's a more detailed explanation of 1 and 2.
>
>1. and 2. Being new to Linux, I am trying to add to a backup script that
>already exists. However, before I do so, I'd like to know more about what
>it's doing, and where things are going. What I want to backup is linux
>directory /home/shared, which it is doing; but I'd also like to backup /home
>so that each individual user folder can be backed up as well.
>
>The way I understand it is like so: /home/shared is being backed up on a
>daily? basis. Is this correct?

It depends. This script itself contains no instructions about how often to
run. It *probably* runs as a daily cron job. Read up on crond (the cron
daemon). For a quick check, look in (probably - I'm not sure how much these
locations vary among Linux distros, and my answers always are based on
Debian practices) ...

/etc/cron.daily/
/etc/crontab
/var/spool/cron/crontabs/

.... to find a cron entry that runs the script, probably daily at an
out-of-the-way time.

>Should I write another script based on this
>one that will copy the /home/ directories minus the shared directory?

Dunno. A direct answer requires deeper knowledge of your setup than you've
given us. An indirect answer -- you apparently (from your prior posting
here) need some more general backup than you have. This one may work for
you, or it may be too slow, or it may use up too much disk capacity in the
backup filesystem. As usual, the devil is in the details.

Since this script uses day of the week for the directory name, it will
maintain 7 complete copies of anything it backs up. You need to do the math
and see if it works for you as to storage space.

Another option -- I offer this just as an example -- is to use the
combination of "tar" and "gzip" to save a compressed archive of anything
you want to backup. This might be faster or slower -- compressing takes CPU
time, but the compressed file is smaller so takes less time to write -- the
tradeoff is in the details, again -- but it will surely be smaller.

I'm way far from the best shell script writer here ... I normally do even
the simplest stuff in Perl, not bash ... but the key line is
***approximately*** this ...

tar -czf /mnt/backup/`date +"%A/"`home.shared.tgz /home/shared

.... with the same sort of redirection as in your sample script. (Or just
/home at the end, depending on what you want to backup.) With a little more
work, you should be able to backup each directory in /home/ separately, but
that's too much to go into here (especially with me doing the writing --
though I can do it off the top of my head in Perl, I can't in bash).

Read the man page for tar and experiment a bit to get it exactly right; I
didn't test this, so it probably has some small (maybe even large) error.

>--------------------------------------------------
>With that said, here's the script. The only things I've changed is the
>username & password.

I *think* e-mailing it also introduced additional line breaks, and that
matters for shell scripts. Below, I've added blank lines to separate what I
believe are the actual lines of the script (except for the comment (#)
lines at the beginning).


>Thanks,
>Eve
>
>#!/bin/sh
>#backup_main: simple backup routine to be used with samba and bash cp.
>#this one simply copies an entire directory recursively to an smb mount.
>#
>#written by RKL - 7/17/2003

>mount -t smbfs -o
>username=username,password=password,workgroup=workgroup
>//BACKUP/backup /mnt/backup
>&>/root/backup_scripts/logs/`date
>+"MOUNT-%y-%m-%d.log"`
This line mounts the samba share and logs the result to a file in root's
directory.

>if [ -f /mnt/backup/connected ]; then
This line verifies that the mount succeeed, by checking for a known
fliename (connected) in the samba share.

> rm -rf /mnt/backup/`date +"%A/"`
This line removes any existing directory that matches the directory name
that the backup will use.

> mkdir /mnt/backup/`date +"%A/"`
This line creates a fresh directory to hold the backup.

> cp -r /home/shared/* /mnt/backup/`date +"%A/"`
>1>/mnt/backup/logs/`date +"DAILY-%y-%m-%d.log"`
>2>/mnt/backup/logs/`date +"DAILY-%y-%m-%d.err"`
This line uses "cp -r" to do the actual backup, redirecting STDOUT (1) and
STDERR (2) output to log files on the samba share.

> umount /mnt/backup &>/root/backup_scripts/logs/`date
>+"MOUNT-%y-%m-%d.log"`
This line unmounts the samba share.

>fi
This line ends the "if" statement that confirmed that the samba mount had
succeeded.



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