As with majority of my posts, I offer nothing new or unique. This is just a script that has been useful to me and if you find it useful, my time and effort in writing this up have been validated.

<code>
#!/bin/sh

#Define your variables here:
SOURCE_DIR=     # e.g. /home/andrej/documents
TARGET_DIR=     # e.g. /mnt/hda7/docbackups
BACKUP_FILENAME=     # e.g. andrejdocs

#  Make sure output directory exists.
if [ ! -d $TARGET_DIR ]; then
    mkdir -p $TARGET_DIR
fi

#  Rotate backups
for j in  6 5 4 3 2 1 0; do
    for i in $TARGET_DIR/$BACKUP_FILENAME.tgz.$j; do
        if [ -e $i ]; then
            mv $i ${i/.$j/}.$(( $j + 1 ));
        fi
    done
done

cd $SOURCE_DIR
tar -cvzf $TARGET_DIR/$BACKUP_FILENAME.tgz.0 *

chmod 600 $TARGET_DIR/$BACKUP_FILENAME.tgz.0

</code>

In the Nightly MySQL Backup I briefly talk about how to use cron in scheduling scripts to run periodically.

Either way, after the other day, I did some research and found out how simple it was. So this post isn’t really anything new, just a short compilation of what I found online.

(You will need shell access to the hosting server and your hosting company will need to allow you to run scripts and use cron.)

Backup Script

First you’ll need a backup script that will dump (export, not destroy) the database. I found this one on www.debian-administration.org and really liked it because it keeps last seven backups – every time you run it, it adds a new backup and gets rid of the oldest one. I had to add the –host= part, because my hosting company has the databases spread across multiple servers. So here’s what I have:

<code>
#!/bin/sh

#Define your variables here:
BACKUP_DIR=
BMYSQL_HOST=
BMYSQL_DBNAME=
BMYSQL_USER=
BMYSQL_PWD=

#  Make sure output directory exists.
if [ ! -d $BACKUP_DIR ]; then
    mkdir -p $BACKUP_DIR
fi

#  Rotate backups
for j in  6 5 4 3 2 1 0; do
    for i in $BACKUP_DIR/$BMYSQL_DBNAME.gz.$j; do
        if [ -e $i ]; then
            mv $i ${i/.$j/}.$(( $j + 1 ));
        fi
    done
done

mysqldump --host=$BMYSQL_HOST --user=$BMYSQL_USER --pass=$BMYSQL_PWD $BMYSQL_DBNAME | gzip > $BACKUP_DIR/$BMYSQL_DBNAME.gz.0
</code>

Once you have this script in place, make sure it has the right permissions – my hosting company requires this: -rwx–x— with the default group.

Schedule your script to run

I found this helpful wiki article at Dreamhost. So I did the following:

crontab -e

Borrowing from Dreamhost’s Handy Crontab Header and adding a line that will run my script at 1:15am every day, this is what I have:

<code>
# minute (0-59),
# |      hour (0-23),
# |      |       day of the month (1-31),
# |      |       |       month of the year (1-12),
# |      |       |       |       day of the week (0-6 with 0=Sunday).
# |      |       |       |       |       commands
15       1       *       *       *       /home/path/to/your/script
</code>

Save the file (don’t forget to leave the last line blank). To see if the file saved correctly, just list the crontab file by this command:

crontab -l

and you should see it printed on the screen. That’s it!

If you use the CUPS printer manager at localhost:631, then select the LPD/LPR connection, and print to socket://ipaddress:9100 (e.g. socket://192.168.0.100:9100)

If you use the Gnome printer manager, select the HP JetDirect and type the IP address of the printer in the Host field and 9100 in the Port field

I either boot from Knoppix live CD or into one of my Linux installs

Then I make sure that the partition I want to capture into an image file is NOT mounted and the partition where I want to save the image file IS mounted.

Then I open partimage by typing partimage

In the top of the screen that comes up…

• I choose the partition to save/restore
• In the “Image file to create/use” field I type in the path of the image file to create or use” e.g. /mnt/home/andrej/images/XPinstalled.gz
• Then I select the action that I want to take – save or restore – and hit Next or F5.

When saving an image, in the next screen…

• I select Gzip compression level
• Tell it to split the image files into files whose size is 2037MB
• Hit Next or F5

When saving an image, in the next screen I sometimes enter description of what I’m capturing. When I’m restoring an image I just confirm the image file I’ve selected.

When I’m in a command-line mood, to save a partition I type
partimage -z1 -d save /dev/sda2 /mnt/home/andrej/images/XPinstalled.gz
…and to restore it, I type
partimage restore /dev/sda2 /mnt/home/andrej/images/XPinstalled.gz

1. Boot from a linux liveCD, such as Knoppix or Gentoo minimal install CD.

2. Mount your file system (you can substitute “mylinux” for whatever you want, just stay consistent)
mkdir /mnt/mylinux
mount /dev/hda5 /mnt/mylinux
If you have your file system spread out across more partitions, mount it all inside the /mnt/mylinux. For example:
mount /dev/hda3 /mnt/mylinux/boot
3. Mount the /dev and /proc. These are dynamically generated by your liveCD and need to be present in your file system in a second – so don’t skip this step.
mount -t proc none /mnt/mylinux/proc
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/mylinux/dev
4. Chroot to your file system
chroot /mnt/mylinux /bin/bash
5. Generate /etc/mtab (dynamically generated list of mounted file systems)
grep -v rootfs /proc/mounts > /etc/mtab
6. Reinstall grub to your boot partition
grub-install /dev/hda3
or to your MBR but I don’t recommend it:
grub-install /dev/hda
or manually…
grub
NOTE: If you’re using Windows’ boot.ini to load your linux, you’re going to have to re-dd your 512-byte bootsector file (see my previous post if you need instructions)

So my grub.conf now looks something like this:
timeout 3
default 0
title Gentoo 2.6.13-r3
root(hd0,2)
kernel /boot/kernel-2.6.13-gentoo-r3 root=/dev/sda3 idle=halt
title Gentoo 2.6.14-r5
root (hd0,8)
kernel /boot/kernel-2.6.14-gentoo-r5 root=/dev/sda9 idle=halt


…you’ll need to download a tool that does this :) There’s an unofficial one from Microsoft that I’ve been using and it works well. Make sure you read the Readme file.

Create an ISO file:
dd if=/dev/hdc1 of=$HOME/yourcd.iso
And then burn another CD using this ISO file using your favorite CD-burning software.