making archives of directories

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gumdigger

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#26778 2-Oct-2008 23:23

hi.

i am trying to write a basic archiving (bash) script. following is the sequence (i final way i thought this might work.)

1. user gets asked what folder to archive
2. using find or someother cmd the script will search that folder name
3. if it finds that the folder is located in 2 or more different locations, the script will ask user which one to archive.
4. make a tar archive and give it the name of the folder.

i am not sure how to do step 2,3,4.

wazzageek

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#168718 2-Oct-2008 23:45

Ummm - without testing, something like

[code]find $HOME -name "<directory name here>" -type d | wc -l [/code]

this will output the number of directories found ... use the built in script utilities to switch based upon the output (i.e. 0 = none found, prompt, 1 = do it, 2 = ask)

Of course, this is making a few assumptions / ignoring other things - like staying in the local file system, that the user is capable enough to type in the correct folder name.

Plus, is a tar format what you want? (other options include cpio / zip)

also - perhaps midnight commander or ytree might be of assistance (I assume this is interactive command line required?) ([code]apt-get install mc[/code])

rsync might be something that is better to look into?

gumdigger

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+1 received by user: 3

#169797 8-Oct-2008 09:57

so far i have got
#!/bin/bash

echo "What do you want to backup?"
read path
find $HOME -name "$path" -type d | -l

i am working on how to list the available choices and make user select. sorry i couldnt find much on script utlities. how to use that

gumdigger

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+1 received by user: 3

#171566 16-Oct-2008 15:36

the archives i make, i want them to name them according to their directory names.
so if i want to backup user1 folder
lilo/disk/storage/user1

then i want to name the archive as user1