How can I take back up of a directory and update the changes(Incremental backup) to it.

Step1: Suppose you want to take backup of /home directory. Use tar(Tape ARchive) command  to do this as below
cd /
tar cvfz home.tar.gz /home

The options used here are

c –For creating the archive
v –For verbose mode, so that you can see what files are archiving
f –To take back to a file called home.tar.gz insted of tap drive
z –To compress it with Gzip

Step2: Once the first backup is completed update only changes to the archive by using below script

#!/bin/bash
gunzip /home/tar.gz
tar uvf /home.tar /home/
gzip /home.tar
Save this file and exit
The options used here are
u –For updating the archive with only new and updated files only
v –For verbose mode, so that you can see what files are archiving

f –To take back to a file called home.tar.gz instead of tap drive

First the script will unzip the archive file then it will update the archive with new and updated files from /home directory. Then once again gzip is used to compress this. 
Note: We can not update tar archive when it is compressed so we first uncompressed then only we updated the archive file.
Step3: Enter the crontab for this script to run at 3 AM on every day.
00 3 * * * /bin/bash /path/to/script
For more information on CRONTAB configuration Click here and for issues here. Please subscribe to our RSS feed to get updates on shell scripting.
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Surendra Anne

Mr Surendra Anne is from Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, India. He is a Linux/Open source supporter who believes in Hard work, A down to earth person, Likes to share knowledge with others, Loves dogs, Likes photography. He works as Devops Engineer with Taggle systems, an IOT automatic water metering company, Sydney . You can contact him at surendra (@) linuxnix dot com.

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