This script enables a ‘Time Machine alike’ backup of folders on a computer to a remote server. The script keeps daily snapshots by saving the deltas compared to the previous backup. The rest of the info is symlinked so you don’t end up using 7 times the required amount of disk space on the server.

I’ve been using this script quite some time to backup my Linux desktop to an NSLU2. I found it back during the spring clean of my archives and save it here for future reference.

#!/bin/sh

# This script does personal backups to a rsync backup server. You will end up
# with a 7 day rotating incremental backup. The incrementals will go
# into subdirectories named after the day of the week, and the current
# full backup goes into a directory called "current"
# Credits: tridge@linuxcare.com

# directory to backup
BDIR_LIST="/home /usr/share/jalbum"

# excludes file - this contains a wildcard pattern per line of files to exclude
EXCLUDES=excludes

# the name of the backup machine
BSERVER=hydra

# your password on the backup server
export RSYNC_PASSWORD=<insert_password_here>


########################################################################
# --exclude-from=$EXCLUDES  
BACKUPDIR=`date +%A`
OPTS="--force --ignore-errors --delete-excluded 
      --delete --backup --backup-dir=$BACKUPDIR -a --exclude-from=$EXCLUDES"

export PATH=$PATH:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin

# the following line clears the last weeks incremental directory
[ -d $HOME/emptydir ] || mkdir $HOME/emptydir
echo "Clearing last weeks incremental directory..."
rsync -vv --delete -a $HOME/emptydir/ backup@$BSERVER::backup/$BACKUPDIR
rmdir $HOME/emptydir

# now the actual transfer
echo "Starting actual backup..."
for BDIR in $BDIR_LIST; do
	rsync -vv $OPTS $BDIR backup@$BSERVER::backup/current
done

echo "Backup completed!"