Incremental backup with crontab

Question

I have a NAS on my LAN and I want to have an incremental backup once a day on a removable hard disk and then a full backup once a week. I heard about crontab and rsync, but I don't have any idea on how to do incremental and full backups.

My PC is running Linux, so I can use rsync and crontab. How should I set up rsync and crontab working together to have a daily incremental backup and a weekly full backup?

Supposing that NAS IP Address: 192.168.1.100 and the removable hard disk is plugged in my PC with USB, what scripts do I have to write? I need to backup all the folders in the NAS.

Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

Here is a detailed instruction about how to use rsync and crontab to backup linux files. http://www.cubebackup.com/blog/automatic-backup-linux-using-rsync-crontab/

But you need to understand the process and made modifications based on your need.

Answer 2

Thanks for all the answers and hints. I've found a way to do what I asked for and I want to share it with all of you.

1. First: backup.sh. In this file we set up the source directory and the destination folder in which all the files we'll be copied. The code is easy to read.

   #!/bin/bash
   #Backup script
   
   #Config
   src="/Users/user/Backup/from/*"
   dest="/Users/user/Backup/to"
   log="/Users/user/Backup/backup.log"
   user=$USER
   date=$(date +"%d-%m-%Y %T")
   
   #Output on log file
   echo "--- Start Backup" >> $log
   echo "--- Source: $src" >> $log
   echo "--- Dest  : $dest" >> $log
   echo "--- $date by $user" >> $log
   echo "---" >> $log
   
   #Command
   rsync -t -r -v --progress --stats --delete $src $dest >> $log
   
   #Output on log file
   echo "---" >> $log
   echo "--- End Backup" >> $log
   

2. Second: crontab. With a few command lines we can setting up a crontab job every day (night) at 23.59. Open the terminal (with root privileges $ su and enter root's password. If you are using root for the first time, first set the password for it with $ sudo passwd). Open the crontab editor with

   # crontab -e
   

   Then make the previous script (supposed to be saved in /Users/user/Backup/backup.sh) runnable everyday at 23:59.

   59 23 * * * /Users/user/Backup/backup.sh