Create backup of important files & folders and send to GoogleDrive.

Backup Ubuntu 20.04 to GoogleDrive using rclone.md

Backup Ubuntu 20.04 to GoogleDrive using rclone

We'll be using rclone and a cronjob which will trigger a custom made bash script.

Install and configure rclone

Install rclone

$ sudo apt install rclone
$ sudo rclone config

Set up a GoogleDrive repo by following the official guide. However, when you reach the step Use auto config, make sure to answer no if you're runnig a server without a screen. If you select yes you'll end up not being able to login to google from your machine.

When you're all set you should have a repo inside rclone. Check your repo name with sudo rclone config.

$ sudo rclone config
Current remotes:

Name                 Type
====                 ====
my-gdrive   drive

You can test if it's all working fine by uploading something. The :/ tells rclone to copy to GoogleDrive root. Append with :/folder to create a subfolder. Verbose -vv will give you a progressbar and output.

$ sudo rclone copy test.txt my-gdrive:/
$ sudo rclone -vv copy test.txt my-gdrive:/ 

Configure backup script

This (ugly, but working) bash script will copy all folders inside the array backup_folders. It'll create a subdir called rclone-backup-<date-time> inside your GoogleDrive.

#!/bin/bash
backup_folders=(
        '/etc' # etc configs
        '/home' # all home folders
        '/var/lib/docker/volumes' # docker volumes
        '/var/www' # html data
)
backup_dest_repo='my-gdrive:/'
backup_repo_date=$(date +'%Y-%m-%d-%H:%M:%S')
backup_repo_folder="rclone-backup_$backup_repo_date"
backup_repo_path=$backup_dest_repo$backup_repo_folder


for backup_path in "${backup_folders[@]}"
do
        echo "$backup_repo_date: STARTING BACKUP: "$backup_path
        sudo rclone -vv copy $backup_path "$backup_repo_path$backup_path" --copy-links
done

To trigger this at 2am every day and output logs, create a logfolder and set up cronjob.

$ sudo mkdir /var/log/backup
$ sudo crontab -e

0 2 * * * /bin/bash /home/user/scripts/backup/run.sh >> /var/log/backup/rclone.log 2>&1

All set!