Simple Backup Solution

Here is part of a solution from my daily backup script which is called by cron: Backup Linux configuration, scripts and documents to Gmail. The full script is in appropriate because:

• it includes targeted /home/me/* files but skips 1 GB of /home/ files important to you used by FireFox, Chrome and other apps which I have no interest in backing up.
• it includes important files to me but unimportant to you in /etc/cron*, /etc/system*, /lib/systemd/system-sleep, /etc/rc.local, /boot/grub, /usr/share/plymouth, /etc/apt/trusted.gpg, etc.
• it emails the backup every morning to my gmail.com account for off-site backups. Your backups are not only on-site but also on the same machine.

Here is the relevant script, parts of the which you might adapt:

#!/bin/sh
#
# NAME: daily-backup
# DESC: A .tar backup file is created, emailed and removed.
# DATE: Nov 25, 2017.
# CALL: WSL or Ubuntu calls from /etc/cron.daily/daily-backup
# PARM: No parameters but /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf must be setup

# NOTE: Backup file name contains machine name + Distro
#       Same script for user with multiple dual boot laptops
#       Single machine should remove $HOSTNAME from name
#       Single distribution should remove $Distro

sleep 30 # Wait 30 seconds after boot

# Running under WSL (Windows Subsystem for Ubuntu)?
if cat /proc/version | grep Microsoft; then
    Distro="WSL"
else
    Distro="Ubuntu"
fi

today=$( date +%Y-%m-%d-%A )
/mnt/e/bin/daily-backup.sh Daily-$(hostname)-$Distro-backup-$today

My gmail.com is only 35% full (out of 15 GB) so my daily backups can run for awhile more before I have to delete files. But rather than an “everything older than xxx” philosophy I’ll use a grandfather-father-son strategy as outlined here: Is it necessary to keep records of my backups?. In summary:

• Monday to Sunday (Daily backups) that get purged after 14 days
• Sunday backups (Weekly backups) purged after 8 weeks
• Last day of month backups (Monthly backups) purged after 18 months
• Last day of year backups (Yearly backups) kept forever

My purging process will be complicated by the fact I’ll have to learn Python and install a Python library to manage gmail folders.

If you don’t want generational backups and want to purge files older than 2 months this answer will help: Find not removing files in folders through bash script.

In summary:

DAYS_TO_KEEP=60
find $BACKUP_DIR -maxdepth 1 -mtime +"$DAYS_TO_KEEP" -exec rm -rf {} \;