This shell script is run daily by cron to create backups of a minecraft server.

minecraft_backup.sh

screen -R MC -X stuff "say Performing backup $(printf '\r')"
screen -R MC -X stuff "save-off $(printf '\r')"
screen -R MC -X stuff "save-all $(printf '\r')"
sleep 3

# Backup

cd /<path to backups folder>

# Delete file older than 5 days
find ./*.tar.gz -mtime +5 -exec rm {} \;

NOW=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d")
tar -cpvzf /<path to backups folder>/minecraft-$NOW.tar.gz /<path to minecraft folder> --exclude='logs/*' --exclude='*.log' --exclude='.versions'

# Done
sleep 3
screen -R MC -X stuff "save-on $(printf '\r')"
screen -R MC -X stuff "say Backup complete. $(printf '\r')"