Question

i have the following bash script on my server:

today=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d")
find /backups/www -type f -mtime -1|xargs tar uf /daily/backup-$today.tar

as you can see it creates backups of files modified/created in the last 24h. However if no files are found, it creates corrupted tar file. I would like to wrap it in if..fi statement so id doesn’t create empty/corrupted tar files.

Can someone help me modify this script?

Thanks

Answer 1

One relatively simple trick would be this:

today=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d")
touch /backups/www/.timestamp
find /backups/www -type f -mtime -1|xargs tar uf /daily/backup-$today.tar

That way you’re guaranteed to always find at least one file (and it’s minimal in size).