How to take backup of important system configuration files and get it all sent to you in an email

The purpose of this article is to protect your important configuration and setting files that could change over time and you would want to retain a copy of these files for protection of your system.

I recommend you specify the list of important files and get them sent to you once a week via email using the script and guideline below.

First of all you have to configure a cron task that will run regularly once every week and although you can set up a user specific cron it is advised to set up a system based cron since the task you are carrying out is system wide.

user@server:/$ cat /etc/cron.weekly/aweeklycron
#!/bin/sh
echo "`date` - Daily cron - Taking config file backup and sending via email." >> /var/log/mycron.log
/etc/sysconfig/configbackup.sh & >> /var/log/mycron.log

Now place the script in directory mentioned above in the cron task.

Create the direcory if it doesn't already exist.

sudo mkdir /etc/sysconfig

The script below uses Zip file format since it is a format that can be scripted to password protect your files.

$ sudo vi /etc/sysconfig/configbackup.sh
#!/bin/bash
hdir="/etc/sysconfig"
dt=`date "+%Y-%m-%d"`
tfile="/opt/backup/configbackup-$dt.zip"
ilist="$hdir/includelist.txt"
tmail="email@domain.com"
subj="Unique Email title - Backup - $dt"
sudo ufw status numbered > /tmp/ufwstatus.txt
sudo rm $tfile
sudo zip -r $tfile `cat $ilist` -P aSecretPassword
( echo "Configuration Backup taken on $dt attached." ; uuencode $tfile $tfile ) | mailx -s "Systenmane System config Backup" $tmail

Make the script executable.

sudo chmod 755 /etc/sysconfig/configbackup.sh

Create an Include List that can contain system files and folders that are important, reconfigured or customized and you wish to take a regular backup of them.

$ sudo vi /etc/sysconfig/includelist.txt
/etc/asterisk/

/etc/cron.weekly/aweeklycron
/etc/resolv.conf
/etc/denyhosts.conf
/etc/init.d/vncserver
/etc/postfix/main.cf
/etc/postfix/master.cf
/etc/hosts
/etc/fstab
/etc/ssh/ssh_config
/etc/ssh/sshd_config
/etc/samba/smb.conf
/etc/sysconfig
/etc/rsyslog.conf
/etc/ufw/ufw.conf
/etc/network/interfaces
/tmp/ufwstatus.txt

This should complete your system config backup task and you should expect to see the weekly email containing a zip file with the contents that you have selected in your includelist.txt delivered by your sincere robotic task.

Subject to outgoing email configured and working.