Bashscripts.org

Running ArchLinux, I like to mess with system configs alot, and i was wanting an easy way to make intelligent backup copies of my files ... QUICKLY.

To the rescue, the .bashrc file !!!

Insert this function into your .bashrc file to make quick work of backing up files.



it works pretty simply, say you want to make a backup copy of your /etc/fstab file ...... (now who DOESN'T need a backup copy of that I ask you ? ) You can supply the full path /etc/fstab ......as shown below, or you can cd into the directory the file resides in and just call the file....as shown even FURTHER below The command is simply bu followed by either the full path and filename, or if your already in the files directory, just bu FILENAME



The backup copy is listed by Year/Month/Day/Hour/Minute ...... and if your REALLY crazy, you could add in seconds....... Makes it easy to keep track of when you made a backup and makes it easy to do too.

Want to remove all the .backup files ???
..... make sure nothing else is labeling their backups with the same .backup extension or you might erase something you didn't intend too ! Hope it comes in handy for someone else besides myself

Some might rather have backup put key files somewhere else ie in .backup or /backup


You could do that pretty easily too...

This would put all files into /backup/


This would put all the files into ~/.backup (in your home directory)

this would require that you are IN the directory of the file you want to backup. You would move the file with the bu FILENAME ...... you could not use the /path/filename method like i listed above.

Here's a twist to so you can maintain your backed-up file in the same directory structure in your .backup directory


In this case, creating a backup of /etc/fstab will place it in ~/.backup/etc/fstab and creating a backup of 'somefile' in the current directory will place it in the current working folder in .backup.



In addition, you can safely delete any/all files in the ~/.backup directory since this script is the only thing that creates/modifies it. You can even 'rm -fr' the ~/.backup directory and the script will re-create it as necessary.

It would be great to make it also as a backup utility for directories as well.

bud