Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook - Third Edition

Scheduling backups at intervals

You can create a cron job to schedule backups at regular intervals.

A sample is as follows:

    $ crontab -ev

Add the following line:

    0 */10 * * * rsync -avz /home/code user@IP_ADDRESS:/home/backups

The preceding crontab entry schedules rsync to be executed every 10 hours.

*/10 is the hour position of the crontab syntax. /10 specifies executing the backup every 10 hours. If */10 is written in the minutes position, it will execute every 10 minutes.

Have a look at the Scheduling with a cron recipe in Chapter 10, Administration Calls, to understand how to configure crontab.