efrecon/davix-backup repository overview

⁠davix backup

davix-backup will select the lastest file matching a pattern (probably the result of a local backup operation), possibly compress it and send it to a remote resource for long(er)-term storage. davix-backup is able to rotate the files at the remote location to keep their number under a given threshold. davix-backup assumes that it "owns" the remote directory and will only work properly when a single davix-backup (possibly run several times) is run against a remote directory. While the default is to use the underlying davix⁠ utilities for backup operations, this can be turned off to perform backup against local (mounted?) directories.

When compressing using zip, it is possible to operate on the latest directory instead. In this case, the recursive content of the latest directory will be zipped and sent to the remote location.

⁠Options

davix-backup accepts both short (led by a single - dash sign) and long (led by two -- dash sign) options. Long options can either be separated from their arguments with a space or an equal = sign.

Apart from the following options, davix-backup accepts one or several patterns as argument, and these patterns will be used when looking for the latest file to select for backup. For the cases when the patterns are led by a - dash sign, it is possible to separate the options from the pattern arguments with a double-dash, --.

⁠-v or --verbose

This option does not take any argument and will output more messages on the console. This can be usefull for following up progress and/or in logs of long-going backup procedures.

⁠-x or --davix

Takes the start of the davix commands to execute as an argument and defaults to davix. The davix utilities come as a set of binaries where specific operations are appended to the main name after a single dash, e.g. davix-ls or davix-mkdir. davix-backup will automatically add the necessary sub-command to the command specified through its --davix option. When the value of this option is empty, davix support will be turned off and davix-backup will work against local directories.

If you do not want or cannot install davix, but have a Docker environment, it is possible to give the following as a command, with no trailing space. This will only work when working uncompressed, as compression uses a temporary file that is likely to be created outside of your home directory.

docker run -it --rm --entrypoint= -v ${HOME}:${HOME} efrecon/davix davix

⁠-o or --davix-options

Takes a string that might contain davix specific options that will be added to the options given to all davix commands before their execution. The default set of davix options is an empty string. The long option can also be written --davix-opts.

This option is cumulative (together with the next one), every occurence of the option will append the value to the set of options that will be passed to davix with a whitespace separator.

⁠-O or --davix-options-file

Takes the path to a file that might contain davix specific options that will be added to the options given to all davix commands before their execution. This is a good place to specify credentials of various sorts, for example. The default is an empty string. The long option can also be written --davix-opts-file.

This option is cumulative (together with the previous one), every occurence of the option will append the value read from the file to the set of options that will be passed to davix with a whitespace separator. The following pseudo-example reads the beginning of authentication options from the command line and the password from a file:

./davix-backup.sh -o "--userlogin myuser --userpass" -O my-secret-file --

⁠-d or --destination

Takes the (remote) location directory where to place files as an argument. It defaults to the local directory. davix-backup will attempt to create the directory, including the entire path of directories when these do not exist. In order to be able to specify remote locations starting with http:// or https://, you will need proper support for davix, see options --davix and --davix-options. The long option can be shortened to anything that starts with --dest.

⁠-k or --keep

Number of copies of the files to be kept at the destination location. The default value is empty, meaning that all copies will be kept.

⁠-c or --compression

Takes the compression level as an argument and defaults to -1, meaning no compression at all: the selected files will be copied as is to the destination. As soon as compression is greater or equal to 0, davix-backup will attempt to compress to an archive in a temporary directory. zip, when present is preferred because it is able to perform some encryption on the archive using a password. When not present, gzip will be used instead, if available. See option --compressor.

⁠-w or --password

Takes the password to use for zip archive encryption. Default to an empty string, meaning no encryption. The long option can be abbreviated to --pass.

⁠-W or --password-file

Same as the --password option, but takes the path to a file from which the password will be read. This is useful for integration with Docker secrets for example.

⁠-z or --compressor or --zipper

Takes the path to the compressing binary to use for compression. Only zip and gzip are recognised. Password encryption is only supported by zip.

⁠-t or --then

Takes a command to execute once the backup operation has ended. The default is an empty string, meaning that no command will be executed. When a command is specified, it will take the path to the destination resource that was created.

⁠--wait

Wait for a number of seconds before the (first) copy operation. The default is not to wait at all. Whenever the value of the period contains a : sign, a random value between both periods on each side of the : sign will be computed. Periods can be integers, but also human readable strings such as 5M or 5 Minutes, etc.

⁠-r or --repeat

Repeat the copy operation, waiting for this many seconds between the start of the copy and the next attempt. The period is in seconds, and can also be expressed in human-readable forms (see --wait). The default is not to wait and perform a single copy operation.