rambling on

I discovered I could backup important files on my system using crontab and dropbox today, it’s awesome. I had a small problem in the implementation of it, namely that the script I found by Andrea Fabrizi, was slightly broken when uploading directories.
I decided that it really wasn’t wise to send the files one by one up a pipe.
So I decided to archive them, then send that nice big archive, including a SQL database dump.
Here’s my final two scripts:

First the one that does the uploading….
# vim /usr/local/sbin/dropboxupload

#!/bin/bash
DROPBOX_USER="" # your dropbox user email address
DROPBOX_PASS="" # your dropbox password
	#
	# Code based on DropBox Uploader 0.7 from http://www.andreafabrizi.it/?dropbox_uploader
	LOGIN_URL="https://www.dropbox.com/login"
	HOME_URL="https://www.dropbox.com/home"
	UPLOAD_URL="https://dl-web.dropbox.com/upload"
	COOKIE_FILE="/tmp/du_cookie_$RANDOM"
	RESPONSE_FILE="/tmp/du_resp_$RANDOM"

    UPLOAD_FILE=$1
    DEST_FOLDER=$2

	# Login
	echo -ne " > Logging in..."
	curl- -s -i -c $COOKIE_FILE -o $RESPONSE_FILE --data "login_email=$DROPBOX_USER&login_password=$DROPBOX_PASS&t=$TOKEN" "$LOGIN_URL"
	grep "location: /home" $RESPONSE_FILE > /dev/null

	if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
		echo -e " Failed!"
		rm -f "$COOKIE_FILE" "$RESPONSE_FILE"
		exit 1
	else
		echo -e " OK"
	fi

	# Load home page
	echo -ne " > Loading Home..."
	curl- -s -i -b "$COOKIE_FILE" -o "$RESPONSE_FILE" "$HOME_URL"

	if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
		echo -e " Failed!"
		rm -f "$COOKIE_FILE" "$RESPONSE_FILE"
		exit 1
	else
		echo -e " OK"
	fi

	# Get token
	TOKEN=$(cat "$RESPONSE_FILE" | tr -d '\n' | sed 's/.*<form action="https:\/\/dl-web.dropbox.com\/upload"[^>]*>\s*<input type="hidden" name="t" value="\([a-z 0-9]*\)".*/\1/')

	# Upload file
	echo -ne " > Uploading '$UPLOAD_FILE' to 'DROPBOX$DEST_FOLDER/'..."
    curl- -s -i -b $COOKIE_FILE -o $RESPONSE_FILE -F "plain=yes" -F "dest=$DEST_FOLDER" -F "t=$TOKEN" -F "file=@$UPLOAD_FILE"  "$UPLOAD_URL"
    grep "HTTP/1.1 302 FOUND" "$RESPONSE_FILE" > /dev/null

    if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
        echo -e " Failed!"
		rm -f "$COOKIE_FILE" "$RESPONSE_FILE"
        exit 1
    else
        echo -e " OK"
		rm -f "$COOKIE_FILE" "$RESPONSE_FILE"
    fi

Ok, now for the script to backup everything and use the above script to send the tarball.
# vim /usr/local/sbin/dropbox_backup

DROPBOX_DIR="Backups" # where you want to save it in your Dropbox account
BACKUP_SRC="/var/www/ /etc/nginx/ /etc/php5/cgi/ /usr/local/sbin/" #anything else you can think of that is a critical setting file for you
BACKUP_DST="/tmp"
MYSQL_SERVER="127.0.0.1"
MYSQL_USER="root" # best to use the root account for this
MYSQL_PASS="somepassword" # Your msql password

#
# Stop editing here.
NOW="Backup-"$(date +"%Y.%m.%d")
DESTFILE="$BACKUP_DST/$NOW.tgz"

# Backup files.
mysqldump -u $MYSQL_USER -h $MYSQL_SERVER -p$MYSQL_PASS --all-databases > "$NOW-Databases.sql"
tar cfz "$DESTFILE" $BACKUP_SRC "$NOW-Databases.sql"

dropboxupload "$DESTFILE" "$DROPBOX_DIR"

rm -f "$DESTFILE" "$NOW-Databases.sql"

This fixes the problem of slow uploading & you have saved heaps of space on your dropbox account by archiving it.