rsbackup.cron(1)

✨ rsbackup.cron — the group chat's fave little cron script ✨

okay so first things first bestie: this page is rsbackup.cron from the General Commands Manual, section 1. yes the whole thing is literally just "cron script for rsbackup" and honestly? iconic. slay. 💅

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

rsbackup.cron [OPTIONS] FREQUENCY

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so rsbackup.cron is the lil guy you get cron to call so your backups, your pruning and your reporting all just... happen. automatically. no cap. no you sitting there at 3am running stuff by hand. she's giving main character energy for your filesystem fr fr. 💖

and FREQUENCY? that one is not optional, bestie. it has to be exactly one of hourly, daily, weekly or monthly — and it has to match up with how often you're actually invoking it. yes, it's a vibe check on your own cron schedule. 🙈

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

• --dry-run, -n — passes the --dry-run option straight through to rsbackup. it's the "what would happen if I did the thing" era. lowkey obsessed with a preview. 👑
• --verbose, -v — shows you the rsbackup command before it runs it. so you can be nosy about exactly what's about to go down.
• --help, -h — prints a usage message and then peaces out. bye! 🎀
• --version, -V — displays the version string. flex the numbers bestie. ⭐

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🍓 CONFIGURATION 🍓

all the config lives in /etc/rsbackup/defaults. it's a shell script fragment, so it's just vibes and variable assignments, and you should define these bad boys in it:

• backup — sets how often to attempt backups, aka how often to run rsbackup --backup. default is hourly.
  • and listen: use backup policies if you want full control over the actual backup frequency. that's the real fine-grained slay.
• report — sets how often to send an email report. default is daily.
• email — sets the destination address for the email report.
• prune — sets how often old backups get pruned. default is daily.
• prune_incomplete — sets how often incomplete backups get pruned. default is dweekly.

💜 Frequencies 💜

the possible frequencies are hourly, daily, weekly or monthly. that's the whole menu, bestie.

🌈 Example 🌈

here's the whole thing looking pretty, copy it and make it yours:

#
# Set backup=hourly|daily|weekly|monthly to control frequency of
# backup attempts. (Use backup policies for fine-grained control over
# when backups happen.)
#
backup=hourly

#
# Set report=hourly|daily|weekly|monthly to control frequency of
# email reports.  (Hourly is probably a bit much!)  Only effective
# if email is not "".
#
report=daily

#
# Set email=ADDRESS to have the report emailed to that address.
#
email=root

#
# Set prune=hourly|daily|weekly|monthly|never to control frequency of
# automated pruning of old backups
#
prune=daily

#
# Set prune_incomplete=hourly|daily|weekly|monthly|never to control
# frequency of automated pruning of incomplete backups
#
prune_incomplete=weekly

#
# Prefix to the rsbackup command
# Use 'nice' and/or 'ionice' here.  Remember to quote correctly.
#
nicely=

quick heads up from the original, bestie: that report setting is only effective if email is not "". so don't set email to empty and then wonder why no report showed up. 😭

also: the comments say prune and prune_incomplete take never too — and remember to quote correctly if you're putting nice and/or ionice in nicely. don't get cute with your quoting and then act surprised. 💀

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🌸 SEE ALSO 🌸

rsbackup(1), rsbackup-mount(1), rsbackup(5).

🫶 AUTHOR 🫶

Richard Kettlewell <rjk@greenend.org.uk> — the legend who wrote all this. iykyk. 💖

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and that's the whole page, bestie — rsbackup.cron, General Commands Manual, section 1, and yes the footer is just rsbackup.cron(1) all over again because she contains multitudes. go forth and let cron do the heavy lifting. periodt. 👑✨🦋