Simple-Backup

A lightweight, configurable backup tool for creating local archives of your important files. This tool creates compressed backups on your local filesystem that can be easily transferred to external storage or cloud services.

Overview

Simple-Backup provides:

Configurable backup sources and destinations
Support for both TAR (high compression) and ZIP (faster) archive formats
Pattern-based file exclusion
Cross-platform compatibility on Linux systems

Installation

You can install Simple-Backup system-wide to run it from anywhere:

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/yourusername/simple-backup.git
cd simple-backup

# Run the setup script
./setup.sh

The setup script will either:

Create a symlink in /usr/local/bin if you have write permissions
Prompt you to run with sudo if needed
Offer to add the directory to your PATH in ~/.bashrc

After installation, you can run the backup command from any directory.

Configuration

Create new backup jobs by adding JSON configuration files to the configs/ directory. Each configuration file should include:

Field	Description
`outputDir`	Directory where backups will be saved (supports `~` for home directory)
`inputs`	List of directories/files to back up
`ignorePatterns`	List of patterns to exclude from backup
`archiveType`	Either `"tar"` (default, higher compression) or `"zip"` (faster, better compatibility)

Example configuration:

{
    "outputDir": "~/backups/",
    "inputs": [
        "~/Documents/",
        "~/Pictures/"
    ],
    "ignorePatterns": [
        ".git/",
        "node_modules/"
    ],
    "archiveType": "zip"
}

Running

You can run backups manually or as a scheduled task:

Manual Execution

# Once installed, simply run:
backup

# Or from the repository directory:
./backup.py

Scheduled Execution (Linux)

Add a cron job to run backups automatically, for example weekly on Saturday at 1:05 AM:

sudo crontab -e
# Add this line:
5 1 * * 6 /path/to/simple-backup/backup.py >> /var/log/simple-backup.log 2>&1

Exclude Patterns

The exclusion system uses simple string matching:

Patterns are matched against the full file path
No regex or glob syntax is supported
For directories, adding a trailing slash (e.g., .git/) will exclude the directory and all its contents

What's Next?

After creating backups, you'll need to manually copy them to external storage or cloud services like Proton Drive, Google Drive, or Dropbox for off-site backup.

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