[plug] Ambiguous redirection error

[Richard]

On Saturday 11 May 2002 10:08 am, Anthony J. Breeds-Taurima wrote:
> On Sat, 11 May 2002, Richard wrote:
> > I am currently trying to write a script(s) that will backup certain
> > personal files on a regular basis. My email is one of the things I would
> > like to backup and, using kmail, it resides in a single dir, Mail, in
> > mbox format. I have been trying to work out a command to append all files
> > in the Mail dir to their name sake in a separate backup dir, which would
> > then be re-archived. I have been trying to redirect the output of the cat
> > command to the backup files and using the * to perform the action on all
> > files in the dir, but I keep getting the error message 'ambiguous
> > redirection'. I could explicitly name all of my mail files/folders in the
> > script but would like to avoid having to update the script every time a
> > new folder is added in kmail. Could anyone suggest a command-line string
> > that would have the desired effect? Or a better way of regularly
> > archiving my mail (if I'm in danger of re-inventing the wheel :) Thanks.
>
> If I understand you you want to do something like:
> ---
> cd ~/path/mail
> for i in * ; do
> 	cat $i >> ~/path/backup/$i
> done
> ---
>
> That will for every file in ~/path/mail append it's contents to a file
> witht the same name in ~/path/backup.
>
> As others have suggested tar is a reasonable way to do a backup.
>
> You could do something like:
>
>
> ------
> DATE_STAMP=$(date +"%Y%m%d")
>
> for dir in /path1 /path2 /path3 ; do
> 	DIR_NAME=$(/bin/echo "$dir" | sed -e 's/\//-/')
>
> 	if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
> 		FIND_ARGS="-newer $dir/.incr"
> 	else
> 		FIND_ARGS=""
> 	fi
>
> 	cd "$dir"
> 	find . $FIND_ARGS -print0 | cpio -i0mp | \
> 		bzip2 -9 > /path/to/backup/$DIR_NAME_$DATE_STAMP_tbz
>
> 	touch "$dir/.incr"
> done
> ------
>
> If you run that script with no arguments is will only backup files that
> have changed since your last backup.  If you run it with any arg it will
> backup all files.  I haven't tested the script at all so you'll want to
> check the command arguments to cpio find etc etc with the man pages.
>
> cpio has an "exclude" option so if you have _very_ large files in your
> home directory then you can make an exclude file somewhere to make sure
> you don't backup that 1.9Gb VMware machine :)
>
>
>
> Yours Tony.
>
> /*
>  * "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the
>  * same level of thinking we were at when we created them."
>  * --Albert Einstein
>  */

Thanks to both for the help...just what I needed. A testing we shall go :)