FUNKYBACKUP - http://www.funkytwig.com/blog/funkybackup

A backup script for Linux which is simeler to, and build upon the Mac Timemachine:
* Backup every hour and keep for a day
* Backup every day and keep for a month
* Backup every month and keep for a year
* Backup every year
* Is very efficient as (incremental backups):
  * Only hold each version of a file once (using the minimum amount of disk space)
  * Only copies files that have changes (using minimum resources, disk, CPU and network (if copying over net) )
* Is extremely easy for users to restore

The differences are
* It can backup more frequently than an houre (i.e. every 10 minutes)
* It sends emails if backups did not hapen for a predefined time
* It does not have a GUI but instead relies on a human readable file system

Setup

The scripts should be put in there own directory (e.g. ~/bash). 

There needs to be a config files called vars.inc.bash.  There is a file called vars.inc.bash.example which should
be copied to vars.inc.bashi and updated.  It has comments in it to explain the not obvious varables.  

The backup is run through a crontab, there is an example called crontab.txt.

For the scripts to work you must prime the backup directory.  Adter seting up vars.inc.bash run ./prime.bash.
This creates a empty backup directory and creates an emapty logfile whith belongs to the current user (if the 
scripts are being run as root this is not nessesery but does no harm).
  
As the script sends emails the box needs the ability to do so.  If there is not ssmtp is a lightweight package
that  along with mailutils can send email (but only send, it is not a fill mailserver).

For the user to restore files the filesystem containing the backups need to be available to users (i.e. via samba).

If you are on a debian based system to rotate the logfiles every week and keep 4 weeks logs create a files called 
/etc/logrotate.d/funkybackup (as root) with the folwing in it:

/var/log/funkybackup.*.log {
  weekly
  rorate 4
  compress
}

Licence

See LICENCE

Contact Me

To contact me see http://www.funkytwig.com/contact-us