Automate Rsync to USB

[horsi]

Can someone please give me some thoughts on how I can schedule:

* Mount a USB drive
* Rsync a few local folders/files (what does rsync do when full?)
* Unmount the USB

Just want to copy off my time mahcine backups, photos and config.xml once a week/day.

Thankyou
Paul

[horsi]

Put this together - tested as a cron job - can anyone see any problems with it?

Thanks
Paul

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mkdir /mnt/usbbak
mount /dev/da0p1 /mnt/usbbak
rsync -azv /mnt/Timemachine/Sysconfig /mnt/usbbak
rsync -azv /mnt/Timemachine/Sysbackups /mnt/usbbak
rsync -azv /mnt/Timemachine/Home /mnt/usbbak
umount /mnt/usbbak
rm -r /mnt/usbbak

[ponyslaystation]

It's a real shame no one can be bothered confirming if this would work
I did see in the scripting section(?) there is a post on automating this process, but it is a huge script that has no real instructions for the layman.

Even if you look in the scripting section on how to setup and run a script, all it says is learn to script! sheesh.

And what about the Wiki?

Q: Can I automatically backup my data to external, USB drives that mount automatically?

A: Yes, but since you want everything to be automatic you will have to learn about scripting.

What a joke.

I would have thought that this would be a feature that would popular and easily implemented.
Don't get me wrong, I think nas4free is an awesome piece of software, i just wish you didn't a IT degree to auto mount a usb drive!

[horsi]

I can confirm this works - just format the usb device first to ext. The beauty of Rsync means that you can also back data up from or two remote servers with a command like

From remote server

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rsync -e ssh -av username@192.168.1.1:/mnt/remotedata /mnt/localdata

To remote server

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rsync /mnt/localdata-e ssh -av username@192.168.1.1:/mnt/remotedata

Just need to setup SSH certificates to be able to automate this which is a whole other story - on the flip side I use this command to move all the data off my old server over the my new one

Paul

[ponyslaystation]

So if i wanted to run this script as a cron job, how would i do that?

create a txfile with the above commands in it, name it something like backup.sh , chmod it....

then, um Im a little lost. how do i tell cron to run this?

cheers

OK, think i figured it out

i Put this in a file called /scripts/usbbackup.sh

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mkdir /mnt/usbbackup
mount /dev/da4p1 /mnt/usbbackup
rsync -azv /mnt/Blackhole /mnt/usbbackup
umount /mnt/usbbackup
rm -r /mnt/usbbackup

then in my cron job i put: /scripts/usbbackup.sh

and it worked! BUT, how do i get my rsync to verbose to a log file?

cheers

[horsi]

You got it.

Re the output maybe you could run something like this

rsync -av /from/here /to/here > /log/file/here.txt

test it at the command line and see how you get on.
Paul

[ponyslaystation]

I think I'm getting the hang of this

This is now my rsync line:

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rsync -azv --log-file=/logs/rsynclog /mnt/Blackhole /mnt/usbbackup

What if i want more than 1 rsync line? is it possible for the next line to append the log file?

Also is it possible to write a log with the date in it eg, rsynclogDDMMYY ??
ok got this working with:

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rsync -azv --log-file=/logs/rsync-`date "+%Y.%m.%d.%H.%m."`log /mnt/Blackhole /mnt/usbbackup

Now about that append....

Cheers