James Emmrich

I have been updating various pages throughout the site, mainly my Fresh Ubuntu install page which can be found under the Linux section.

Over the next few days I will have more updates. I am also going to add a post on using Git and possibly include it in a post regarding rapid web development. However both are pretty big and can be quite complex topics.

As mentioned before somewhere in my blog, here is the script I have written to back up my databases. This is actually my local backup script, I have a much different one on the server which uses a passwordless ssh connection to backup the databases offsite.

#!/bin/sh
# Database backup 2008 <jemmrich@gmail.com>
# Nightly Usage:
# 0 0 * * * /home/james/Dropbox/Home/mobilewolf/scripts/backup.sh &> /dev/null

LOGFILE="/home/james/Dropbox/Home/mobilewolf/databases/databases.log"
BACKUPDIR="/home/james/Dropbox/Home/mobilewolf/databases"
STARTTIME="$(date +%Y-%m-%d-%r)"

# MySQL Login
SQLUSER="sqluser"
SQLPASS="sqlpass"

# Dump databases
echo "*** Database Backup Started: $STARTTIME" >> $LOGFILE

# Keep yesterdays databases
rm -f $BACKUPDIR/yesterday/*
mv $BACKUPDIR/*.gz $BACKUPDIR/yesterday/

for i in `echo "show databases" | mysql -u $SQLUSER -p$SQLPASS | grep -v Database`;
do
 mysqldump -u $SQLUSER -p$SQLPASS $i > /tmp/$i.sql
 echo $i >> $LOGFILE
 gzip /tmp/$i.sql

 # Send Databases
 cp /tmp/*.sql.gz $BACKUPDIR/

 # Remove our dumps to keep us clean
 rm -f /tmp/*.sql.gz
done

echo "*** Database Backup Ended: $(date +%Y-%m-%d-%r)" >> $LOGFILE
echo "\n" >> $LOGFILE

Setup

1. Change the user and password to a user that has ability to access all databases for dump
2. Download and set executable permissions chmod +x backup_databases.sh
3. edit cron to execute every night: crontab -e
4. add: 0 0 * * * /home/james/Dropbox/Home/mobilewolf/scripts/backup_databases.sh &> /dev/null

Ideas for your setup

• The line following “Send databases” replace cp, with scp to send the databases to remote server. You will need to have passwordless ssh connections setup.
• Have the log file emailed to you once completed

My Future Improvements

• Enable backup archiving for the past week rotated daily so I can go back to a database from 2 or 3 days or even a week ago

Dropbox.com has become a huge time saver for me, and most likely a life saver as well.

I have a folder in my Dropbox called Home. Here I have sub folders for each machine that I have. My two laptops, a desktop which hold computer specific files that are different for each computer I have.

Files such as:

• /etc/hosts
• /etc/fstab
• /databases/

Rather than copying these manually, I have simply moved the files to the dropbox and then symbolically linked them. That way when the system updates these files, Dropbox does it’s sync.

The databases folder is a folder which contains database dumps. My crontab is setup to nightly dump databases in tar form and place them here, for Dropbox to store.

I also have a folder called Resources. This contains files that are shared between computers. I have symbolically linked my .fonts folder here. Now whenever I install a new font for a design project, all my other computers are updated too.

For chat software like Pidgin and XChat, I have symbolically linked their folders .purple and xchat2 respectively, to my Dropbox home folder. Because these will be shared between computers I don’t have them in their respect computer sub folder. Now no matter what computer I chat on, my chat logs and software settings are up to date.

Projects that I work on are placed in my Dropbox under a folder called Projects, with each project as its own sub folder.

During my work, or daily routine I tend to shuffle, download, delete, and create new files. While I don’t always place these files to my Dropbox, I am very careful to not hold them on my laptops for long periods of time.

For files that I want to hold, I either move them to my Dropbox or to my NAS server depending solely on their importance and need of accessibility.

The results

I can now format my hard drive at any time, provided that Dropbox has had time to sync any changes. I also have the feeling of security knowing that my hard drive crashes will not take me out of commission.