A quick and dirty backup script for saving my VPS. Creates compressed tar backups of specified directories with automatic rotation to save disk space.

Note: This script was created with assistance from aider.chat.

Features

• Backs up multiple directories into a single compressed tar.gz archive
• Automatic backup rotation - keeps only the N most recent backups
• Creates timestamped backup directories for easy identification
• Uses fast compression (gzip -1) to minimize backup time
• Requires sudo access for creating and managing backups in /backups

Requirements

• zsh shell
• sudo access
• tar with gzip support

Usage

Basic usage - backup directories with default settings (keeps last 2 backups):

sudo ./vps_backup.sh /home/user /etc /var/www

Specify how many backups to keep:

sudo ./vps_backup.sh --keep-n 5 /home/user /etc

Specify a custom output directory:

sudo ./vps_backup.sh --outdir /custom/backup/location /home/user /etc

Combine options:

sudo ./vps_backup.sh --keep-n 3 --outdir /mnt/external/backups /home/user /etc /var/www

Default Behavior

• Output directory: /backups/YYYY-MM-DD_HH-MM-SS (timestamped)
• Backup retention: Keeps the last 2 backups, removes older ones
• Compression: Uses gzip with default compression level (level 6)
• Permissions: Requires sudo to create /backups directory and write backups

How It Works

1. Validates sudo access
2. Creates /backups directory if it doesn't exist
3. Creates a timestamped subdirectory (or uses custom --outdir)
4. Creates a single backup.tar.gz containing all specified directories
5. Cleans up old backups, keeping only the N most recent backup directories

Warning

This is a quick and dirty script designed for simple VPS backups. For production environments or critical data, consider more robust backup solutions with features like incremental backups, encryption, remote storage, and monitoring.