Question

I’m having some difficulties with this. Basically, for work I need a bash script that backs up a variable number of directories that are stored in a config file.

I’m sure I need to import the list from the config file and just use a loop to copy all the directories across. I have it working for a single directory. My code is below. I’ve cut it down to a minimum.

#!/bin/sh
if [ ! -f ./backup.conf ]
then
echo "Configuration file not found. Exiting!!"
exit
fi
. ./backup.conf

unset PATH

# make sure we're running as root
if (( `$ID -u` != 0 )) ; then { $ECHO "Sorry, must be root.  Exiting..."; exit; } fi ;

# attempt to remount the RW mount point as RW; else abort
$MOUNT -o remount,rw $SOURCEFILE $DESTINATIONFOLDER ;
if (( $? )); then
{
$ECHO "snapshot: could not remount $DESTINATIONFOLDER readwrite";
exit;
}
fi ;

# step 2: create new backup folder:
$MKDIR $FULLPATH


**Loop should go here**
#copy source directories to backup folder
$RSYNC                              \
-va --delete --delete-excluded              \
--exclude-from="$EXCLUDES"              \
$SOURCEFILE $FULLPATH;

The config file is as follows

SOURCE=path
DESTINATION=path2
BACKUPFOLDERNAME=/laptopBackup

My question is what is the best approach to do this task. i.e how should I format the config file to import a variable amount of paths to an array? or is there a better way of doing this?

Answer 1

I’d personally do it slightly differently and have my configuration file more of a “control file”. For example:

/path       /path2     /laptopBackup
/tmp        /test      /bigmachine

etc.. 1 line per mount, 3 fields per line (source, destination, backupfoldername)

Then use something like :

while read SOURCE DESTINATION BACKUPFOLDERNAME
do

<stuff>

done < ${configfile}

(removed the cat so as not to shame myself further 🙁 )