Incremental backups on 3b1?

[bruce dietrich-campbell]

In article <1692 at naucse.UUCP> jdc at naucse.UUCP (John Campbell) writes:
>In article <16730 at pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>, sjohn at cory.Berkeley.EDU (John Sasinowski) writes:
>> 
>> 	I am looking for a way to do incremental backups on my 3b1.
>
>I found I did not like backing up a system that required one huge
>cpio save set of over 100 floppies (67 Mb disk) either.  To alleviate
>this problem, I broke the task into 5 groups (group1 ... group5).

I use a perl script to backup my system.  It runs off a simple input
file which divides up the files into groups to be separately backed up.

Each line in the file begins with a name and is followed by a list of
directories and/or files to backup if that name is chosen. 
When the perl script is run, it displays the list and
asks for a choice from the first column. The entry 'ignore' is
special. It indicates directories and/or files which should never be
backed up. The script won't allow you to choose the name 'ignore'.
My set up is as follows:

sys	/
u	/u
lib	/usr/local/lib
lcl	/usr/local /usr/man
ignore	/usr/adm /usr/mail /usr/preserve /usr/spool /usr/tmp /tmp

For example, if you enter 'sys', then a list is made of all files in the
directory tree beginning with '/', which are more recent than the file
'/etc/.installdate'.

The list is then shortened by eliminating all files that would be
backed up if _any other name_ in the list were chosen. That is, all files
in the directory tree beginning with '/u', '/usr/local/lib', '/usr/local',
'/usr/man', '/usr/adm', '/usr/mail', '/usr/preserve', '/usr/spool',
'/usr/tmp' and '/tmp' are eliminated.

If 'lcl' is chosen, therefore, all files files more recent than
'/etc/.installdate' in '/usr/local' and '/usr/man' are backed up,
except for those in '/usr/local/lib'.

If 'lib' is chosen, all files in '/usr/local/lib' are backed up. (The script is
smart enough not to eliminate all files in '/usr/local'.)

When the script prints out the menu of names, it adds the choice

part	partial backup only

to the head of the list. If you choose 'part', a partial backup of all files
is done. The list of files to backup is prepared by taking each name in turn
from the menu, except 'ignore', and finding files which are more recent than
the last backup done for that name. The date of last backup for each name
is marked by the creation of a file in a directory.

My system is set up so that a partial backup is written to the UnixPC
floppy drive, while other backups are written to files in a directory,
later to be transferred to another computer. The whole thing is easily
tailored by changing a few perl and shell scripts.

If anyone would like to try out the perl script please e-mail me and
I'll send a copy.
.............................................................................
Bruce Dietrich-Campbell  ARPA:   campbell at vx2.gba.nyu.edu
                         USENET: ...!{uunet,rocky,harvard}!cmcl2!vx2!campbell