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Backup Script with Cron Integration

During my Homelab journey, I faced the challenge of automating data backups to preserve snapshots effectively. To address this, I developed a Python script that seamlessly archives files and integrates with Cron for task scheduling. This setup ensures backups are executed periodically without requiring manual intervention.

Overview of the Backup Script

The Python backup script performs the following tasks:

  1. Directory or File Backup: It compresses a specified file or directory into a .tar archive and stores it in a specified destination directory.
  2. Automated Cleanup: It checks the age of existing backups in the destination directory and deletes backups older than a specified number of days.
  3. Error Handling: It handles cases where the source directory, file, or destination directory is missing or invalid.

Script Workflow

  1. Input Parameters:
  • source_directory: The directory containing the file or directory to be backed up.
  • destination_directory: The directory where backups will be stored.
  • saved_item: The specific file or directory to be backed up.
  • days_before_deletion: The number of days after which backups will be considered old and deleted.
  1. Backup Process:
  • Ensures the source directory exists.
  • Ensures the destination directory exists, creating it if necessary.
  • Compresses the specified file or directory into a .tar archive named with the current date.
  1. Cleanup Process:
  • Iterates over existing .tar files in the destination directory.
  • Parses dates from file names to determine their age.
  • Deletes backups older than the specified threshold.

The script can be found here

Example Command

In my case, I use this script to backup the minecraft server hosted in a docker container.

python3 /path/to/script.py /var/lib/docker/volumes /home/Minecraft/backup minecraftdata 4

Cron Job

What is Cron?

Cron is a time based job scheduler in Linux. It allows users to schedule tasks (cron jobs) to run automatically at specified times or intervals.

Writing the Cron Job

open the crontab editor:

crontab -e

append the line:

0 0 * * 0 python3 /home/Backup/script.py /var/lib/docker/volumes /home/Minecraft/backup minecraftdata 4

This cron job runs the backup script every Sunday at 12:00 AM.

Save and Exit the file.

TroubleShooting

Cron Job logs can be checked using:

grep CRON /var/log/syslog

General guide to Cron


# ┌───────────── minute (0 - 59)
# │ ┌───────────── hour (0 - 23)
# │ │ ┌───────────── day of the month (1 - 31)
# │ │ │ ┌───────────── month (1 - 12)
# │ │ │ │ ┌───────────── day of the week (0 - 6) (Sunday to Saturday)
# │ │ │ │ │
# │ │ │ │ │
# │ │ │ │ │
# * * * * * <command to execute>

(source wikipedia)