Lately I have written about a great Unix tool called SCP. Now recently I had the need to equal two Unix filesystems from which one was a remote filesystem in oversea. Now how to do that?!

Now you could just copy all the stuff from the remote system (I’m sure you know all about … tar, gzip, zip). For sure a secure way to go! But also very time and resource intensive for sure. Could that be done more elegant? ….  Someone could also have the idea to use a “better” ftp client being able to compare directories. Clever eh?

But are you aware how it stretches the needed time for it when you put a 3rd system in between? Anything better?

A few of you might now know a brilliant little helper out of the Microsoft Ressource Kit called robocopy?! Be carefully with the /MIR option …. read first and be aware what you are doing!

But I guess just only a hand full of you all here will know that this gorgeous robocopy is just the Windows equivalent of a UNIX tool called rsync.   Go for it!  rsync - Thats Tops!

Unfortunately there seems to be no sunshine without shade! So even moving to Media Temple was easy doing and since being there I had no issues anymore, I started to feel annoyed about them not offering a working home directory backup utility like the prior provider did within his CPanel.

Just I thought complaining about will not really help you to get your back-ups done and so I decided  to write my own little replacement script for it. Perhaps someone will be happy using it too …

#!/bin/bash
# FTP Backup by Michael Lohmar
# Script: ftpbackup.sh
# Author: Michael Lohmar
# Contact? info@mikelo.com

if [ $# != 3 ];then
echo “”
echo “Shell script for backing up one given domain.”
echo “Usage: $(basename $0) domain_to_backup [FTP/NOFTP] [DEL/NODEL]”
echo “”
exit
fi

version=1.0

##### INSTALL INSTRUCTIONS: STEP 1 #####
##### START ENTER YOUR INFO HERE #####

serverip=yourserver.com
# Your remote servers IP address
# EG: serverip=192.168.1.1

serveruser=youruser
# The FTP login for the remote server
# EG: serveruser=bob

serverpass=yourpassword
# The FTP password for the remote server
# EG: serverpass=mypassword

localdir=/home/your/local/folder
# WHERE LOCAL FILES ARE TO BACKUP
# NO TRAILING SLASH
# EG: localdir=/backup/folder/daily

sourcedir=/home/your/source/folder
# WHERE LOCAL FILES ARE TO BACKUP
# NO TRAILING SLASH
# EG: localdir=/domain/source/folder

remotedir=your/remote/folder
# FTP directory where you want to save files to
# This directory must exist on the FTP server!
# NO TRAILING SLASH
# EG: remotedir=/serverdirectory

##### END YOUR INFO HERE #####

##### INSTALL INSTRUCTIONS: STEP 2 #####
# CHMOD the script to 755: # chmod 755 ftpbackup.sh

# Add the script to a scheduled cron job to run as often as you like (if wished!)

# In SSH do crontab -e, then paste in the following
# 0 6 * * 0,1,3,5 /home/admin/ftpbackup.sh
# This does a FTP backup every second day of the week, lookup cronjobs for more info on setting dates and times.
# Don’t forget to substitue the path info to the script with your details
##### INSTALL COMPLETE #####
# DO NOT MODIFY ANYTHING BELOW #

host=`hostname`
cd $sourcedir

echo “Starting FTP Backup on ” $host

# Creating a local tar.gz Archive
tar cfvz $localdir/$1_`date +%y_%m_%d`.tar.gz $1

# Transfer the tar.gz Archive to remote server
if [ $2 == FTP ];then
cd $localdir
echo “user $serveruser $serverpass
cd $remotedir
bin
verbose
put $1_`date +%y_%m_%d`.tar.gz
” | ftp -i -n $serverip
fi

# Delete local tar.gz Archive again
if [ $3 == DEL ];then
rm $localdir/$1_`date +%y_%m_%d`.tar.gz
fi

echo “Ftp backup complete on ” $host
exit 0