Sponsored Content
Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting [bash] Simple backup (cp) script but incremental Post 302343546 by mrtiller on Wednesday 12th of August 2009 10:17:19 PM
Old 08-12-2009
At the beginning of the backup process, use the "touch" command to create a file called, say, "timestamp." This file will have a modification time corresponding to when the "touch" command was executed.

Code:
touch timestamp

then, use the -newer switch in the find command of the backup:

Code:
find . -newer timestamp ...

This will find only the files and directories newer than the file "timestamp."

If you're sure no files will be created after commencing the backup, you could execute the "touch" command after the "find" command instead of before it.
 

10 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting

1. Shell Programming and Scripting

How to reinvent incremental backup in bash?

I want to backup two important files everytime they are modified. How would I write a bash script that would check the dates of my zip files and my data files and only create a new zip file if the zip file is older than the two data files? Thanks, Siegfried (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: siegfried
1 Replies

2. Shell Programming and Scripting

tar - incremental backup

Hello everyone! I'm trying to make incremental tar archives of a folder for an example. On the box I use is UNIX AIX installed. I tried some sample codes I found on several web pages but with no success. Don't know what I'm doing wrong. Please write some sample code to make incremental tar... (0 Replies)
Discussion started by: Funky_ass
0 Replies

3. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

incremental backup

Hi All.. i am trying to write a script which will give the incremental tar backup of all files with latest timestam. i tried with find -mmin -2 but if it takes half on hour or something to creat the tar itself, then no meaning in using the above command. so please help me to find the... (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: Usha Shastri
2 Replies

4. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Best unix incremental backup utility?

Hello everyone. Could you please advise of what would be the best Unix (Debian 4) program for regular (daily or weekly) incremental backups? I'm not sure whether the backups will be stored on a "backup" drive on the same system or on an external "backup" system, but we would like to have a... (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: nottrobin
2 Replies

5. Shell Programming and Scripting

Incremental backup

Hi, I would like to create a daily incremental backup of a directory with all of the files within and add a timestamp (year-month-day) to the tar.gz file. I have the following, but it doesn't backup the inside files of the directory. #!/bin/bash tar -czf... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: agasamapetilon
1 Replies

6. Windows & DOS: Issues & Discussions

Incremental Backup

I have a folder /root/test in a centos 5.3 system. I want to take an incremental backup of the contents of the folder in the C:\Downloads folder of a windows system present in the same lan as the linux system. What are the ways of executing this plan? Kindly help (0 Replies)
Discussion started by: proactiveaditya
0 Replies

7. Shell Programming and Scripting

Help making simple perl or bash script to create a simple matrix

Hello all! This is my first post and I'm very new to programming. I would like help creating a simple perl or bash script that I will be using in my work as a junior bioinformatician. Essentially, I would like to take a tab-delimted or .csv text with 3 columns and write them to a "3D" matrix: ... (16 Replies)
Discussion started by: torchij
16 Replies

8. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

incremental and full backup.. please help me

Hi, i'm new here(and a newbie) and i need some help with a project. I need to write a script for an incremental backup (this must be executed every day at 24:00) and a full backup (executed once a month) for etc/var/home directories. Can someone please help me with this? And a small explanation of... (9 Replies)
Discussion started by: bender-alex
9 Replies

9. Homework & Coursework Questions

incremental or full backup ???

Hi. Can someone tell me if the following script that i have made is a script for INCREMENTAL BACKUP or FULL BACKUP. My teacher told me that is doing an FULL BACKUP. • find /etc /var /home -newer /backups/.backup_reference > /backups/.files_to_archive • touch /backups/.backup_reference • tar... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: bender-alex
1 Replies

10. Homework & Coursework Questions

Create a simple bash backup script of a file

This is the problem: Write a script that will make a backup of a file giving it a ‘.bak’ extension & verify that it works. I have tried a number of different scripts that haven't worked and I haven't seen anything really concise and to the point via google. For brevity's sake this is one of the... (4 Replies)
Discussion started by: demet8
4 Replies
touch(1)							   User Commands							  touch(1)

NAME
touch, settime - change file access and modification times SYNOPSIS
touch [-acm] [-r ref_file | -t time] file... touch [-acm] [date_time] file... settime [-f ref_file] [date_time] file... DESCRIPTION
The touch utility sets the access and modification times of each file. The file operand is created if it does not already exist. The time used can be specified by -t time, by the corresponding time fields of the file referenced by -r ref_file, or by the date_time op- erand. If none of these are specified, touch uses the current time (the value returned by the time(2) function). If neither the -a nor -m options are specified, touch updates both the modification and access times. A user with write access to a file, but who is not the owner of the file or a super-user, can change the modification and access times of that file only to the current time. Attempts to set a specific time with touch will result in an error. The settime utility is equivalent to touch -c [date_time] file. OPTIONS
The following options are supported in the touch and settime utilities: touch The following options are supported for the touch utility: -a Changes the access time of file. Does not change the modification time unless -m is also specified. -c Does not create a specified file if it does not exist. Does not write any diagnostic messages concerning this condition. -m Changes the modification time of file. Does not change the access time unless -a is also specified. -r ref_file Uses the corresponding times of the file named by ref_file instead of the current time. -t time Uses the specified time instead of the current time. time will be a decimal number of the form: [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.SS] where each two digits represent the following: MM The month of the year [01-12]. DD The day of the month [01-31]. hh The hour of the day [00-23]. mm The minute of the hour [00-59]. CC The first two digits of the year. YY The second two digits of the year. SS The second of the minute [00-61]. Both CC and YY are optional. If neither is given, the current year will be assumed. If YY is specified, but CC is not, CC will be derived as follows: +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | If YY is: CC becomes: | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ |69-99 19 | |00-38 20 | |39-68 ERROR | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ The resulting time will be affected by the value of the TZ environment variable. If the resulting time value precedes the Epoch, touch will exit immediately with an error status. The range of valid times is the Epoch to January 18, 2038. The range for SS is [00-61] rather than [00-59] because of leap seconds. If SS is 60 or 61, and the resulting time, as affected by the TZ environment variable, does not refer to a leap second, the resulting time will be one or two seconds after a time where SS is 59. If SS is not given, it is assumed to be 0. settime The following option is supported for the settime utility: -f ref_file Uses the corresponding times of the file named by ref_file instead of the current time. OPERANDS
The following operands are supported for the touch and settime utilities: file A path name of a file whose times are to be modified. date_time Uses the specified date_time instead of the current time. This operand is a decimal number of the form: MMDDhhmm[YY] where each two digits represent the following: MM The month of the year [01-12]. DD The day of the month [01-31]. hh The hour of the day [00-23]. mm The minute of the hour [00-59]. YY The second two digits of the year. YY is optional. If it is omitted, the current year will be assumed. If YY is specified, the year will be derived as follows: +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | YY Corresponding Year | |69-99 1969-1999 | |00-38 2000-2038 | |39-68 ERROR | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ If no -r option is specified, no -t option is specified, at least two operands are specified, and the first operand is an eight- or ten-digit decimal integer, the first operand will be assumed to be a date_time operand. Otherwise, the first operand will be assumed to be a file operand. USAGE
See largefile(5) for the description of the behavior of touch when encountering files greater than or equal to 2 Gbyte ( 2^31 bytes). When existing file access and modification times cannot be determined (which will occur if a call to stat(2) fails), both times can be changed to known values by settime and utime(2). However, in this case, touch -a (without -m) and touch -m (without -a) will fail because the unchanged time cannot be preserved. ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment variables that affect the execution of touch: LANG, LC_ALL, LANG, LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES, and NLSPATH. TZ Determine the timezone to be used for interpreting the time option-argument or the date_time operand. EXIT STATUS
The following exit values are returned: 0 The touch utility executed successfully and all requested changes were made. >0 An error occurred. The touch utility returned the number of files for which the times could not be successfully modified. ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes: +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ | ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |Availability |SUNWcsu | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |CSI |Enabled | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |Interface Stability |Committed | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |Standard |See standards(5). | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ SEE ALSO
stat(2), time(2), utime(2), attributes(5), environ(5), largefile(5), standards(5) NOTES
Users familiar with the BSD environment will find that for the touch utility, the -f option is accepted but ignored. The -f option is unnecessary because touch will succeed for all files owned by the user regardless of the permissions on the files. SunOS 5.11 9 Sep 2008 touch(1)
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 01:35 PM.
Unix & Linux Forums Content Copyright 1993-2022. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy