Backing up and Archiving within Server

[vaf]

Hi there.

I have been trying to find an application that allows the backing up and archiving of a directory (/server). I have been looking at rsync and tar, but I don't think they do what I would like to have.

Basically this directory is shared over Samba, and I would like to use Crone to create hourly incremental backups and monthly archiving. The /Backup and /Archive directories are also shares over Samba, but read-only.

I am looking at an hourly backup of any file that has changed in the past hour, with the "old" files being moved to another directory or just the new file being copied to /day/hour (first method would be good as that way I have most recent backup complete, with old files stored in other directories (something like /backup/current and /backup/day/hour for all others))

I would also like to run a process at the end of each day (say 11pm) whereby the last hourly backup is into the /backup/day folder, and all of the ./hour folders are removed.

Then at the end of each week the ./day folders are purged in the same way so that I end up with the following in the /backup folder

/backup
/backup/current
/backup/20090201
/backup/20090208
/backup/20090215
/backup/20090221
....

You get what I mean!

I would also like to run a monthly process to move any directory within /server that does not contain a file that has not been modified within the past 6 months to /archive. However if the file already exists then it can't overwrite, but it should rename and move!

The /archive and /backup directory are the mount points of two separate removable drives. The Backup drive is to be removed from site each night, whilst the Archive drive is to be replaced when it is full.

Also, what program can I set-up to send notifications of drive capacity?

I am running a Ubuntu Server 8.10 machine with no GUI. IF I have to install one I will, but i'd prefer to leave it without the GUI as it is strictly a file server, mainly for photos.

Thanks

[secondmouse]

file/dir monitor: pyinotify [ pyinotify - filesystem monitoring in Python with inotify ]

drive capacity monitor: df

I would also like to run a monthly process to move any directory within /server that does not contain a file that has not been modified within the past 6 months to /archive. However if the file already exists then it can't overwrite, but it should rename and move!

find should be able to do this quite easily.

You should also check out rsync. man rsync