Backup System in place

Over the past 2 nights i’ve been working on the backup system for our home network. The hardware is a NSLU2 connected to a 250 gig hard-drive. The software side is a Python script which does 7 day rotating incremental backups to the NSLU2. This way i always have a weeks leeway, in case i over-write something important. I’ve included the script below, if anyone is interested in it.

The NSLU2 has been hacked to do much more then was originally intended. Some pretty neat stuff there, but i’m not sure i’m comfortable hacking something that i just got running as my main backup system! But the NSLU2 is cheap (~$100/CDN), so if you are looking for a simple embedded linux system, this is the way to go.



import os
from time import localtime, strftime
import datetime

archive_path_base = "f:\\backups\\server\\"
path_items = {"rsync":"C:\\Documents and Settings\\jos\\My Documents\\projects\\jos\\Python Projects\\rsync","media":"Y:\\"}

current_archive = int(strftime("%w", localtime()))

# first, xcopy the current_archive over the full archive
current_archive_path = "%s%s" % (archive_path_base, current_archive)
full_archive_path = "%s%s" % (archive_path_base, "full")
#print current_archive_path, last_archive_path

xcopy_string = "xcopy /E /Y /R /H /C /D \"%s\" \"%s\"" % (current_archive_path, full_archive_path)
print xcopy_string
os.system(xcopy_string)

#delete all files in the current_archive_path
rmdir_string = "rmdir /S /Q \"%s\\\"" % current_archive_path
print rmdir_string
os.system(rmdir_string)
os.mkdir(current_archive_path)

#now, copy all items that are new since yesterday.
today = datetime.datetime.today()
onedaydelta = datetime.timedelta(1)
yesterday = today - onedaydelta

xcopy_date_string = "%s-%s-%s" % (yesterday.month, yesterday.day, yesterday.year)
#print xcopy_date_string

#/D:m-d-y
for k,v in path_items.items():
    new_archive_path = "%s\\%s" % (current_archive_path, k)
    if not os.path.isdir(new_archive_path):
        os.mkdir(new_archive_path)
    xcopy_string = "xcopy /S /Y /R /H /C /D:%s \"%s\" \"%s\"" % (xcopy_date_string, v, new_archive_path)
    print xcopy_string
    os.system(xcopy_string)

As you can see, i’m relying heavily on the windows xcopy and rmdir command. There is a version of rsync in python which i was going to use, but i couldn’t find a way to make it do what the /D switch does for xcopy. And the os.rmdir in python requires that the directories be empty, and i just wanted to erase the whole thing, no questions asked.

When i get some more time, i’ll look into finding or making some tools to make this script less windows centric.

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Backup System in place

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