I’ve spent much of this past day researching rsync, and deciding just what I wanted my script to do. For starters, I want my script to create a full backup on the first day of the month, and incremental backups on all the other days of the month. I want it to create the /backups directory if it doesn’t exist, and create a full backup if there are no existing backups, regardless the day of the month. Finally, I want my script to use the system notifications to pass messages, and the notify-send command handles that easily. The default command is notify-send “Title text” “Message body”, so since both of my messages can have the same title, but require a slightly different message body, depending on whether a full or incremental backup is running, I used variables for each of three components, the NOTIFICATION_TITLE, NOTIFICATION_MESSAGE1, and NOTIFICATION_MESSAGE2, each of which contains “Backup Status”, “Full backup completed on $DATE_FORMAT”, and “Incremental backup completed on $DATE_FORMAT”, respectively where $DATE_FORMAT is the variable for the date used to name the current backup directory [DATE_FORMAT=$(date +%Y-%m-%d)].
Here’s the script:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------ #!/bin/bash Note: # Make sure the destination directory $BACKUP_DIR exists, # so this script will create it the first time we run a backup mkdir -p /backups # Creates the backups directory under root if it does not already exist # the backup destination’s parent directory BACKUP_DIR=“/backups” # Variable to name today’s backup destination directory DATE_FORMAT=$(date +%Y-%m-%d) # Today’s backup destination directory CURRENT_LINK_DIR=“$BACKUP_DIR/$DATE_FORMAT” # Variables for the title and notification messages NOTIFICATION_TITLE=“Backup Status” # Full backup completed notification message NOTIFICATION_MESSAGE1=“Full backup completed on $DATE_FORMAT” # Incremental backup completed notification message NOTIFICATION_MESSAGE2=“Incremental backup completed on $DATE_FORMAT” # AI defined this, but I don’t see it in use, I’m commenting it out as a test! # PREVIOUS_LINK_DIR=“” # Find the most recent backup directory for --link-dest # The most recently dated folder LATEST_BACKUP=$(ls -td “$BACKUP_DIR”/*/ | head -n 1) if LATEST_BACKUP=“”; then # Full Backup (just copy everything) rsync -a --delete / “$CURRENT_LINK_DIR/” --exclude=/proc --exclude=/sys --/ exclude=/dev --exclude=/tmp --exclude=/run --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/media --exclude=/backups --exclude=/home # Send the full backup completed message notify-send “NOTIFICATION_TITLE” “NOTIFICATION_MESSAGE1” # Will delete this in final version # echo “Full backup completed on $DATE_FORMAT” fi if [ “$(date +%d)” -eq 1 ]; then # Full Backup (just copy everything) rsync -a --delete / “$CURRENT_LINK_DIR/” --exclude=/proc --exclude=/sys --/exclude=/dev --exclude=/tmp --exclude=/run --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/media --exclude=/backups --exclude=/home # Send the full backup completed message notify-send “NOTIFICATION_TITLE” “NOTIFICATION_MESSAGE1” # Will delete this in final version # echo “Full backup completed on $DATE_FORMAT” else # Incremental Backup using --link-dest # Creates hard links to unchanged files from the previous backup rsync -a --delete --link-dest=“$LATEST_BACKUP” / “$CURRENT_LINK_DIR/” --/exclude=/proc --exclude=/sys --exclude=/dev --exclude=/tmp --exclude=/run --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/media --exclude=/backups --exclude=/home # Send the incremental backup completed message notify-send “NOTIFICATION_TITLE” “NOTIFICATION_MESSAGE2” # Will delete this in final version # echo “Incremental backup completed on $DATE_FORMAT” fi ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If anyone sees anything I’ve missed, or anything I’ve done wrong, please reply! 
Ernie