Re: Copy files from Unix box to IFS

[Pete Hall <pbhall@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 10:36 9/25/2003, Buzz Fenner wrote:
> I'm needing to write a procedure that can be scheduled to run at night that
> copies e-mail backup files from a combo e-mail server/firewall (it has no
> command interface) to a folder on the IFS.  A new folder will have to be
> created each week for the seven daily backup files.  I have no experience
> with FTP and was beginning to take a look at Qshell.  I'm open to
> suggestions that will get me pointed in the right direction and I would like
> it to be a program/procedure that executes on the AS/400 (v5r2m0).

I have to second James Rich's opinion that it would be easier to do on the 
unix box. I've got a process that does a backup of my home directories 
something like that with a bash script:

 cd /home
 tar cp$BACKUPOPT -f - . | (cd $OutputPath/home; tar xf -)

The first tar command copies an entire directory tree from the current 
working directory, with all its contents, to standard output, which is 
piped to a sub-shell, which changes to the target directory takes the piped 
data from standard input and writes it to disk with another instance of 
tar. It's simple and has been very reliable.

$OutputPath points to a different directory each day. There's one for each 
day of the week.

BACKUPOPT is either empty, for a full backup, or contains "N `cat 
/etc/backup.dt`", which evaluates to something like "N 21-Sep", the date of 
the last full backup, to perform an incremental backup of files changed 
since then. Each Sunday, BACKUPOPT is left empty and the script updates 
backup.dt with:

 date +"%d-%b" > /etc/backup.dt.

The script runs automatically from cron, the Nix job scheduler, which is 
pretty easy to set up. Just su (log in as root) and type

 crontab -e

That starts a vi session with root's current crontab (schedule). The entry 
that runs my backup says:

 05 00 * * * /usr/sbin/backup

which means, execute /usr/sbin/backup (the script) at 00:05 every day. Be 
warned though, that vi is a little, uh, cryptic. Press the insert key in 
order to insert text at the current cursor position, press it again to 
overwrite text, and press esc to exit to command mode. In commmand mode, 
type :w to write the changes to disk, and :q to quit (or just :q! to 
abandon the changes without writing). vi does a lot more, but that's enough 
to get you going.

To see what's in crontab, type

 crontab -l

If you're interested, I can give you the script.


Pete Hall
pbhall@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.pbhall.us/