Local backups

If you plan to backup local files (eg. your home directory) to an external hard disk drive, to a separate partition or in a specific folder, you are doing local backups.

Requirements

First, if not already done, please read the Getting started page.

Done ? OK, let's go !

From the command line, cd to the directory where you put the WABAC Machine.

For example, mine is kept in ~/Shell/WABACMachine/, so I would :

cd ~/Shell/WABACMachine

Initialization

From here, run :

sudo ./WABACMachine.sh init <source> <destination>

Please replace <source> and <destination> with the actual paths to the source and destination.

For example, if you want to backup your home directory (/home/john) to an external hard disk drive mounted in /media/backups, you would type :

sudo WABACMachine.sh init /home/john/ /media/backups

If everything runs fine, you should see something like this :

The WABAC Machine has been successfully initialized.

Run 'WABACMachine.sh backup' as root to create a new backup.
Run 'WABACMachine.sh help' to get some help.

The WABAC Machine has created a default configuration file called WABACMachine.conf where you are. You can edit it to suit your needs.

The WABAC Machine has also created a file called .wabac_machine_is_present in . This will make sure we use this destination (this is especially useful if the destination is mounted).

Congratulations, you are now ready to run the WABAC Machine !

Specifying a configuration file

If you want to specify a custom path or name for your config file, you can use the -c option when running init :

sudo ./WABACMachine.sh init <source> <destination> -c <config_file>

For example, let's say you want to backup the home directories of all users on you system to an external hard disk drive mounted in /media/backups. You also want the config file to be stored in /etc/WABACMachine and you want it to be called Homes.conf :

sudo ./WABACMachine.sh init /home/ /media/backups/ -c /etc/WABACMachine/Homes.conf

Again, if everything runs fine, you should see :

The WABAC Machine has been successfully initialized.

Run 'WABACMachine.sh backup -c /etc/WABACMachine/Homes.conf' as root to create a new backup.
Run 'WABACMachine.sh help' to get some help.

First run

The first run will probably take quite some time. Once your WABAC Machine is initialized and configured properly, you just have to run :

sudo ./WABACMachine.sh backup

Or, if you want it to run with a specific configuration file :

sudo ./WABACMachine.sh backup -c <config_file>

If you are not really confident, you can set the WABAC Machine to conduct a dry run.

Once everything is OK and checked, you will probably want to automate the backup process.