Backup

Purpose

Backup uses Stuffit Lite™ to create backups of files and folders.

Requirements

You’ll need the following things to use Backup:

  • Stuffit Lite (a registered version).
  • Cron

Using Backup

Backup creates new Stuffit archives, or uses old ones. If you use an old Stuffit Archive, old copies of old files are replaced with the new copies.

You’ll need to call the Backup program from Cron. Send it the following parameters:

Log=path to log file
Defaults to “Backup Log” in the same folder as “Backup”. Backup remembers the name of the log file, so you only really have to set it once. You should pay attention to the log file. If Backup has trouble backing up a file or folder, this is where you’ll find out about it. Preferably, you will find out about it before you have to restore that item from a backup set.
Destination=folder to put the backup into
The folder where you want the backup to be created or where the already created backup can be found.
Name=Archive name
The name for the archive. This will be the archive’s filename in the “destination” folder. You can put the following substitutions into the name:
  • %_Weekday: Replaced with the day of the week.
  • %_Month: Replaced with the name of the month.
  • %#Day: Replaced with the day of the month.
  • %#Month: Replaced with the number of the month.
  • %#Year: Replaced with the year.
The name will be chopped to 31 characters.
Stuff=
Adds a folder or file to the list of items to add to the backup archive. You can specify “Stuff=” multiple times to backup multiple items. You may find it easier and more intuitive, however, to create a “Backup Folder” on your hard drive, and put aliases to the necessary items in this folder. Then, make sure that Stuffit’s preferences are set to “Backup originals instead of aliases”.

For example, I have the following line in my crontab file:

10 0 * * * Cerebus "Backup" "Name=Nightly %_Weekday %#Month/%#Day/%#Year" "Stuff=Hard Drive:Backups:Nightly Backups" "Destination=Acosta:Backups"

At ten after midnight every night, Backup stuffs the folder called “Nightly Backups” to the folder “Backups” on the volume “Acosta”. If it were performed on the morning of May 12, 1996, the name of the file will be “Nightly Sunday 5/12/1996”.