Backup Scripts

[Floppyman]

Hi all,

I've got a Sony SCSI DDS-3 tape drive in my linux box that I have always wanted to setup to backup my files automatically twice a week or so. I think I can do most of what I need by setting up a cron job and using tar to write to the drive. Does anyone know of some good links that detail how to write a good weekly backup script for a tape drive to run in linux? TIA.

[faulkner132]

Try sbackup (http://sbackup.sourceforge.net). It will require you have your drive mounted. I use it and it works great.
If by chance you use Ubuntu it's in the repositories.

[Floppyman]

Thanks for the reply. I actually use slack, but I will give this a try.

[Floppyman]

Yeah, I'm running into a dependency mess with my older version of Slack (2.4.29 kernel still ), plus I never installed the Gnome desktop nor its libraries way back when I installed it. Since my ultimate plan was to change to a different distro of linux anyway in the near future (probably Debian), I think I'll just wait and install Debian, and then use apt-get for sbackup instead of spending hours sorting out these dependency issues.

[MichaelS]

Hey Floppyman,

For what it's worth, I created some backup scripts that I use my production web/dns/mail servers running Slackware. My backup gets done every night (actually early morning). The backup process consists of taking files from /etc /var /home and tar'ing them with maximum compression (bzip), then burning them to CD (on 1 server) and DVD on another server. Then the servers will mount the media and do a md5sum to compare what was backed up with what is stored locally. After this process is done, root will get an email with the results and total backup size.

If you still need some assistance with the scripting portion, please let me know. I'm by no means a programmer, but I do have some basic programming skills.

Regards,

Michael

[faulkner132]

Michael, I would love to see your script. Any way you could post it or PM it to me?

[Floppyman]

Hi guys,

I actually found a pretty decent script online that backs up a directory onto tape, then prints out backup time/size into logfile which is stored aftewards in the directory that was backed up. If at all possible though, I would still be interested in seeing your backup script, Michael. TIA.

[MichaelS]

Sorry for the delay folks...

I've posted the scripts I use at http://www.shalit.ca/~michael/dump

Username: pcmech
Password: pcmech

Regards,

MS

P.S. Please note that I'm not a programmer, so the scripts aren't perfect, but they do their job. Sometime soon, I hope to make the MD5SUM checks automatic as opposed to emailing root with the md5sums and comparing them visually. I just don't have as much free time as I used to...