Red Hat magazine posted this tip on splitting tar archives on the fly:
Splitting big files into pieces is a common task. Another common task is to create a tar archive, and split it into smaller chunks that can be burned onto CD/DVD. The straightforward approach is to create the archive and then use ’split.’ To do this, you will need more free space on your disk. In fact, you’ll need space twice the size of the created archive. To avoid this limitation, split the archive as it is being created.
This is a very simple and unixy approach to a pretty common problem. Eventually I’ll have to adapt my DVD backup script to use this.
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ibiblio colleague and systems guru John Mills writes:
So, I remember you had a
cute backup script for OS X. Well I have an external USB drive, which I don't want active all the time. My script runs from a cronjob, and automatically mounts and unmounts the external drive, and uses rsync to copy the files.
Here's the script, called backup.sh:
BASH:
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#! /bin/bash
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# Definitions
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DISK=disk1s1
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DIR_NAME=jonmills
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SOURCE=/Users/${DIR_NAME}/
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DEST=/Volumes/Backup/${DIR_NAME}/
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EXCLUDE=/var/log/backup/excludes.${DIR_NAME}
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# Mount a disk by hand with disktool
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/usr/sbin/disktool -m ${DISK}
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# Wait for the disk to spin up, or else this won't work
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sleep 10
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# Copy the files with rsync
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/usr/bin/rsync -av \
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--delete \
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--delete-excluded \
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--exclude-from=${EXCLUDE} \
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${SOURCE} \
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${DEST}
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# Unmount the disk manually with disktool
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/usr/sbin/disktool -u ${DISK}
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crontab looks like this:
CODE:
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#
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# min hour mday month wday command</code>
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# Run the script at 4:30 AM and mail me the log
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30 4 * * * ~/.backup.sh 2>&1 | mail -s "Backup Log - `date`" _____@gmail.com
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