Setting up daily backup script on Ubuntu

Setting up configuration file

The backup script uses json configuration file to get the list of files/folders to be backed up. The config file looks like below.

{
    "archive_type": "bz2",
    "archive_prefix": "username_ubuntu_backup",
    "archive_destination": "/home/username/backups/",
    "items": [
        "/home/username/Documents",
        "/home/username/Desktop",
        "/home/username/Pictures"
    ]
}

• archive_type - Provides the type of backup archive file to be created. Supported formats are tar.bz2, tar.gz, tar. zip is NOT SUPPORTED.
• archive_prefix - Prefix given to the backup archive file.
• archive_destination - Destination where the backup archive should be placed.
• items - List of files/folders to be included in the backup.

Using crontab to backup periodically

cron is a daemon on Linux to run scheduled commands. This is available and running by default on Ubuntu. We need to add an entry for the backup generator script so that it is run as per a given schedule. crontab is the tool which manages the list of commands executed by cron. You can add a new configuration by executing the following command.

crontab -e # This will open the configuration in an editor (vim/nano)

Once the configuration file is ready for edit, add the following lines. Save and exit.

0 10 * * * /home/username/home-made-backup/hmb.py --config /home/username/home-made-backup/sample/config.json
0 16 * * * /home/username/home-made-backup/hmb.py --config /home/username/home-made-backup/sample/config.json

crontab configuration is in the following format.

#
# Each task to run has to be defined through a single line
# indicating with different fields when the task will be run
# and what command to run for the task
#
# To define the time you can provide concrete values for
# minute (m), hour (h), day of month (dom), month (mon),
# and day of week (dow) or use '*' in these fields (for 'any').#
# Notice that tasks will be started based on the cron's system
# daemon's notion of time and timezones.
#
# Output of the crontab jobs (including errors) is sent through
# email to the user the crontab file belongs to (unless redirected).
#
# For example, you can run a backup of all your user accounts
# at 5 a.m every week with:
# 0 5 * * 1 tar -zcf /var/backups/home.tgz /home/
#
# For more information see the manual pages of crontab(5) and cron(8)
#
# m h  dom mon dow   command

Test that the configuration is saved and available for cron to pickup.

crontab -l # Should show the entries added previously

If everything is OK, you should find a backup archive created in the configured folder. Use OneDrive/GoogleDrive/Dropbox to save it on the cloud.