rsync

#!/bin/bash
# Basic backup script
# Written in February 2010

# Set to q to disable verbosity
VERBOSITY="v"

# The program we're using to backup
PROGRAM="rsync"

# The arguments to the program
OPTIONS="-aHP$VERBOSITY"

# The remote machine we're backing up
SERVER="max"

# The local disk to back up to
DISK="/mnt/disk"

# An array of shares on $SERVER to back up
SHARES=(
hr
finance
clients
operations
newsvn
svn
backup/jira
backup/svn/noah
backup/dbbackups/kontrol_live
backup/dbbackups/god
)

# The magic
for share in ${SHARES[*]}; do

VERY simple rsync script. It rsyncs a remote directory across to a local one. There's no special reason why I did this, other than I wanted to run the script on my local machine. It could just as easily rsync a local directory to a remote one.

#!/bin/sh
export RSYNC_RSH=/usr/bin/ssh
origin=remote.machine.com # the remote machine to rsync from
user=miguel # the remote user
rsync -aHPvz "${user}@${origin}:/remote/files/" "/local/files/"

I run ssh-keygen -t rsa and create a password-less key on the remote machine, and copy the .pub file into my authorized_keys. This way I can run this script on a cron, say in the middle of the night, and not have to be around to enter a password at the prompt.