Backup files from my computer to home server?

[Jk]

What would be the best means of backing up my music collection (from my pc) onto my server? I googled and found a bunch of windows tutorials and a linux one but it would erase the folder and rebuild it (that would take too long to backup). I want my server to check my music folder and look for new files. If there are new files then it will update, if there aren't then it will do nothing.

My lamp server is running xubuntu 8.04, a 500gb sata hd, and it is also set up for FTP if that helps any. The computer it will be copying files from is running kubuntu 8.04.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Daeva]

I have done this before a lot on windows. But a buddy of mine directed me towards this article. It seems to get the job done with some minor tweaking.
http://www.reallylinux.com/docs/autoftp.shtml
Hope that helps.

 

[Jk]

ok, I think I have the basic idea of how that works. Only one problem it won't connect when I put it in a script. Here is what my two files look like.

ftpstartup

#!/bin/sh
ftp < autoftp

autoftp

open server
user
password
binary
cd /files/music/
mput /Artists /Instrumentals
bye

When it gets to "open server" it gives me

: Unknown host

But I can get in a terminal and type "ftp" and "open server" and it will prompt me for my username and password. Do I have to type it differently when I put it in a script?

 

[root]

The best way I can think of is this...

First copy all the files to the server using FTP, so you know that the copy on the server is fully up to date.

then write a batch script,
the batch script needs to copy all recently added or modified files, (there is a switch to do this) to a temporary file. then you need to copy the temporary file to the FTP server, (again can be done inside the same batch file), after that delete the temp folder on your local machine. and that's all there is to it.

the hardest part is getting a reliable backup on the server.

It is possible that you can get something that will log into the server look at what is there compare that to what's on your local machine and then only copy the things that you haven't got. but I don't think thi sis as good as the method above. for the simple reason that it's only going to look at the file names. if you've modified the files, (like updated the ID3 tags) then they won't be copied, because the file will already exist on the server even though it's a different file.

the first way I said will copy the new file to the server since the modified date will have changed.