I have been working on a quick and dirty backup script to backup a MySQL database and several directories. Here is the fruit of my labor
# change dir to backup dir
cd /backup
# Build next days worth of file backups
rm -rf /backup/backup.4
mv /backup/backup.3 /backup/backup.4
mv /backup/backup.2 /backup/backup.3
mv /backup/backup.1 /backup/backup.2
cp -al /backup/backup.0 /backup/backup.1
rsync -a-delete /srv/ /backup/backup.0/
# Backup etc
tar -cvf etc.tar /etc
rm /backup/etc.tar.gz
gzip etc.tar
backup MySQL databases
rm /backup/backup4.sql
mv /backup/backup3.sql /backup/backup4.sql
mv /backup/backup2.sql /backup/backup3.sql
mv /backup/backup1.sql /backup/backup2.sql
mv /backup/backup.sql /backup/backup1.sql
mysqldump-all-databases >/backup/backup.sql
# Make 1 compressed tarball of entire shebang
rm /backup/backup.tar.gz
tar -cvf /backup.tar /backup/*
mv /backup.tar /backup
gzip /backup/backup.tar
All of this assumes that you have a directory called ‘backup’ off the root of the file system that you can use for moving stuff about. It will provide you with 5 complete days of full file backups (in the space of 1, plus changes), 5 full days of MySQL backups and a daily snapshot of the /etc/ directory for what ever reason.