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NAME
    backup-reporter - handles several types of backup jobs, and produces a
    uniform report for each job.

SCRIPT CATEGORIES
    UNIX/System_administration

SYNOPSIS
    `backup-reporter [ -delms ] [-t device] [-r recipients] config_file
    [...]'

    `backup-reporter -lms apollo.conf'

    `backup-reporter -ms hermes.conf'

    `backup-reporter -d apollo.conf'

    Note: you must use a config file to specifiy what stuff you want to back
    up.

README
    This is a general script for many types of backup jobs. You can use it
    to configure different types of backups, which can run together or
    independently of each other. It also formats a nice report for each
    backup job.

    Complete documentation is available in the script itself, in the
    embedded POD.

DESCRIPTION
    This is a general script for many types of backup jobs. You can use it
    to make complete system backups, backup a few directory trees, or just
    backup a few files. You can also do all of these jobs at once. A backup
    job can target just one host, or several hosts at once. You can use it
    with ufsdump, dump, tar or pax, whichever works best for your system.
    You can save your archives to tape or just save them to the local
    filesystem (the script will organize your archive files by hostname).

    The main motivation for writing this script was to manage a variety of
    different backup jobs for different systems, with each job having a
    consistent and informative output format. By using config files, I could
    easily modify the targets of the backup jobs without having to modify
    the script itself, and conversely, I could easily modify the script
    itself and have it immediately apply to all backup jobs.

    You specify a backup job by using a config file. The config file syntax
    is a little clumsy, however, sample config files have been placed into
    the archive for this script on CPAN, so you can probably just modify
    them to suit your purposes. This archive is kept in the author's
    directory on CPAN, namely CPAN/authors/id/JNOLAN.

    To see what a config file will do, run the script against it using the
    debugging option -d, and you will see a list of the commands which would
    be run (they won't be run, just listed).

            C<backup-reporter -dl  hermes.conf>
            C<backup-reporter -d  hermes.conf>

    What this script actually does is construct shell commands on the fly,
    based on whatever data you have in your config file and configured
    directly in this script. These shell commands will be calls to ssh, scp,
    tar, ufsdump, gzip, etc. (You will need to edit this script in order to
    configure paths to these binaries).

    If you use the -m option, then the script takes the text of each command
    it generated along with its output, formats it nicely into a mail
    message, and mails it to you at the end of each backup job. It sends
    special mail messages based on the exit status of the commands it
    launches.

    This script expects to be able to ssh and scp to remote hosts as some
    user which has enough priveleges to read the target files. You will need
    to set this up on your own. The example config files are set up to open
    ssh connections as the user root on the remote hosts.

    Instructions for downloading, installing and setting up ssh are availabe
    at http://www.ssh.fi (http://www.ssh.fi/sshprotocols2/index.html) or
    http://www.datafellows.com/f-secure.

    If you like this script and end up using it, please let me know. If you
    run into problems or errors, I will try to give you a hand with it
    and/or post bugfixes and improvements back out onto CPAN. Please email
    me at [email protected].

PREREQUISITES
    This script requires `MIME::Entity', which requires the `MailTools'
    bundle, which itself requires `MIME::Base64'. (If I remember
    correctly... they're all nifty modules, just install all of them.)

COPYRIGHT
    Copyright (c) 1998,1999 John Nolan <[email protected]>. All rights
    reserved. This program is free software. You may modify and/or
    distribute it under the same terms as Perl itself. This copyright notice
    must remain attached to the file.

WARRANTY
    This script comes with absolutely no warranty.

REVISION
    $Id: backup-reporter,v 1.9 1999/12/24 06:21:16 john Exp john $