Shell Programming and Scripting

Okay, so I've looked on here and found some similar things, but not exactly what I am looking for. I am working on creating a script that can back up some files, based on the contents of another file - the configuration file.

First file contains the files to back up - we'll call this backup.conf:

(Format of file: SERVICE:/path/to/file:destination)

ETC:/etc/hosts:./etc
ETC:/etc/netmasks:./etc
DHCP:/etc/default/dhcp:./etc

The next file is the backup script. It contains an "awk" statement to break down the backup.conf file so that it only needs to gather specific parts, based on what needs to be backed up. We'll call this backup:

#awk statement - creates temporary file with targets and destinations
sed '/^ *#/d;s/#.*//' backup.conf | grep -v ^$ | grep ETC | awk -F: '{print $2" "$3}' >! /tmp/backupfiles

#while loop to process output
while read line
do
if [ -f $line ]
then
/usr/bin/cp $line $target
fi
done < /tmp/backupfiles

I realize that $target is not set here. This is the problem that I am running into, and this is just to give you an idea of what I am attempting to do. Basically, the while statement needs to be able to take each line from /tmp/backupfiles and as it reads it, break it down into two variables, the file to back backed up ($line) and the location to back it up to ($target). Using $line is can also verify that the file exists and is available before trying to back it up.

Any suggestions? I am using "ksh" for this on Solaris systems.

Please put code inside [code] tags.

You are using 4 commands where one will suffice:

Code:

awk '/^ *#/ { next }
{ sub( /#.*/, "") }
/^$/ {next}
!/ETC/ { next }
{print $2" "$3}'  backup.conf >! /tmp/backupfiles

Code:

while IFS=: read service file target
do
   if [ -f "$file" ]
   then
       /usr/bin/cp "$line" "$target"
   fi
done < /tmp/backupfiles