Re: Copy files from Unix box to IFS -- MIDRANGE-L

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/