AutoArchive ver. 0.2.0
=======================

Simple backup utility.

Copyright (C) 2003 - 2010 Robert Cernansky
Copyright (C) 2003 - 2010 HOME software



INFORMATIONS ABOUT PROGRAM
==========================


AutoArchive is a simple python script for making backups more easily. It uses
tar for creating archives. The idea of the program is that every information
needed for making a backup is in one file - the archive spec file
(AA_SPEC). Path to this file is passed as a parameter to 'aa' command which
reads informations from it and creates desired backup.

Command 'autoarchive' is alias for 'aa'; commands are equivalent.



Usage
-----

aa/autoarchive [options] AA_SPEC...

Options:

--version
       show program's version number and exit

-h, --help
       show this help message and exit

-v, --verbose
       Turns on verbose output.

-a ARCHIVER, --archiver=ARCHIVER
       Specify archiver type.  Supported types are: ('tar', 'targz',
       'tarbz2', 'tarlzma', 'tarxz') (default: tarbz2).

-i, --incremental
       Perform incremental backup.

-l LEVEL, --level=LEVEL
       Specify backup level which should be created.  Informations about higher
       levels will be erased.  If not present, creates next level in a row.

-c NUM, --compression-level=NUM
       Compression level. If not specified, default behaviour of underlying
       compression program will be used.

AA_SPEC is an archive spec file. It specifies what should be archived and the
archive name. Its standard file name extension is ".aa". For syntax please see
'Archive spec file format' chapter. It is possible to specify multiple ".aa"
files.



Archive spec file format
------------------------

The AA_SPEC consists of one section named "[General]" under which are all the
variables that specifies information about the archive. The variables are
written in the "variable_name: value" form -- one variable per line. Lines
beginning with "#" or ";" are ignored and may be used for comments.

Possible variables are:

name

  Archive name. Created archive will be named according value of this variable
  plus appropriate extension.

path

  Path to archive root. All paths and file names specified in this archive spec
  as well as archive content will be taken as relative to this path.

include_files

  List of space separated file or directory names to backup.

exclude_files

  List of space separated file or directory names to be excluded from backup.

Values that contains spaces has to be enclosed to "". For all directory or file
names standard shell wildcards can be used. Also ~ is expanded to user's home.

When specifying the value it is also possible to refer to other variables in
the form %(variable_name)s.



Example
-------

Let's say that we want make a backup of configuration files of all users except
user foo. Assume that our system has unix-like style of home directories
(directory /home contains directories of all users; configuration files begins
with dot). Name of this backup will be 'users-config'.

First, create file users-config.aa (it doesn't need to have same name as
backup).

----- content of file users-config.aa -----
# AutoArchive file for users configuration files
[General]
name: users-config
path: /home
include_files: */.*
exclude_files: foo
---------- end of users-config.aa ----------

Then to create the backup just type

  aa users-config.aa

and in current directory will be created archive users-config.tar.bz2.



Known bugs
----------

When creating incremental backup, files and directories specified in
'include_files' are always added to archive, even if they did not changed. This
is bug/feature of tar.



Contacting the author
---------------------

Comments, bug reports, wishes about this piece of software are welcomed at
e-mail openhs@users.sourceforge.net.

Homepage: http://autoarchive.sourceforge.net/.