mkbackup

mkbackup - make compressed backups of directories.

Overview

mkbackup is a take off of mkdir, but instead of creating directories, this script creates backup files of target directories. The newly created backup files are automatically datestamped, and an argument may be used to specify how many backup files to keep.

The intention is for mkbackup to be executed as a cron job to perform regular backups of particular directories.

Usage

Usage: mkbackup [OPTION]... DIRECTORY

Description:
  Create a compressed backup of target DIRECTORY.

Options:
  -o <directory>  Output directory of backup file. (default=current directory)
  -l <name>       Name of prefix used to label backup file. (default='backup')
  -n <int>        The maximum number of backup files to keep. Files beyond
                  the limit will be automatically deleted. (default=10)

Example

$ mkbackup -o ~/backups -n 10 myapp

Archiving files ...
...

Created backup: /home/user/backup-20220707-180000.tar.gz

This will create a backup file of the myapp directory, placing it in a folder called backups. Only the latest 10 backup files will be kept. (i.e. any backup files beyond 10 will be removed).

Extraction

The contents of the backup file may be extracted as follows:

$ tar xvf <file>

Or, if you ran the backup script as root, you may want to preserve the ownership of the extracted files:

$ tar --same-owner -x -v -f <file>