Article: Backup your Backpack pages locally

I use wget in this shell commands to get a periodical backup of all information in my backpack accounts, so if i'm not online, i can at least browse the offline version. i have them on a cronjob, so i get a daily export file and a weekly mirror.

note that in most of the scripts i first change to the directory i want it all to be saved, and yes, this is *nix Bash Shell syntax, so change it according to your OS/CLI.

get cookie
this command is to be run once, it gets all the cookie (login) info.

cd /your/desired/path/ wget --save-cookies=yourusername.cookie.txt --post-data="username=yourusername&password=123456&save_login=1" --referer=http://yourusername.backpackit.com/login http://yourusername.backpackit.com/account/authorize/

daily export
this command exports your account to an xml file called export.xml in the working directory. if you prefer to download the file with its original name, take the --output-document=export.xml option out.

cd /your/desired/path/; wget --load-cookies=cookie.txt --output-document=export.xml http://yourusername.backpackit.com/account/export

mirror directory first run
this makes a complete mirror of my backpack account with current timestamps. i run this once a month just in case.

cd /your/desired/path/; wget --mirror -S -k -t1 --load-cookies=cookie.txt http://yourusername.backpackit.com/

weekly mirror directory backup
this makes a complete mirror of my backpack account but just downloading the files that have changed by checking the last-modify date.

cd /your/desired/path/; wget --mirror --timestamping -r -w5 -k -t1 --load-cookies=cookie.txt http://yourusername.backpackit.com/

so the three shell scripts ran by the cron jobs (daily, weekly and monthly) look like this:

daily: (/Users/[your_username]/Documents/backpackit/cron.daily.sh)

echo "running daily backup for [backpack_name]" echo "changing directory..." cd /Users/[your_username]/Documents/backpackit/[backpack_name]/ echo "exporting site..." wget --load-cookies=[backpack_name].cookie.txt --output-document=[backpack_name].export.xml http://[backpack_name].backpackit.com/account/export echo "daily backup for [backpack_name] done"

weekly: (/Users/[your_username]/Documents/backpackit/cron.weekly.sh)

echo "running weekly backup for [backpack_name]" echo "changing directory..." cd /Users/[your_username]/Documents/backpackit/[backpack_name]/ echo "mirroring site..." wget --mirror --timestamping -r -k -t1 --load-cookies=[backpack_name].cookie.txt http://[backpack_name].backpackit.com/ echo "weekly backup for [backpack_name] done"

monthly: (/Users/[your_username]/Documents/backpackit/cron.monthly.sh)

echo "running monthly backup for [backpack_name]" echo "changing directory..." cd /Users/[your_username]/Documents/backpackit/[backpack_name]/ echo "downloading cookie..." wget --save-cookies=[backpack_name].cookie.txt --post-data="username=[backpack_name]&password=9022591&save_login=1" --referer=http://[backpack_name].backpackit.com/login http://[backpack_name].backpackit.com/account/authorize/ echo "mirroring site..." wget --mirror -S -k -t1 --load-cookies=[backpack_name].cookie.txt http://[backpack_name].backpackit.com/ echo "monthly backup for [backpack_name] done"

and the cron jobs look like this (copied at the end of the respective file)

daily (/private/etc/periodic/daily/500.daily)

## backpack daily backup script ################## ## checks if the shell script file exists if [ -f /Users/[your_username]/Documents/backpackit/cron.daily.sh ]; then echo "--------------------------------------------" echo "running daily backpack backup script" ## runs the shell script sh /Users/[your_username]/Documents/backpackit/cron.daily.sh echo "daily backpack backup done" echo "--------------------------------------------" fi

weekly (/private/etc/periodic/weekly/500.weekly)

## backpack weekly backup script ################## ## checks if the shell script file exists if [ -f /Users/[your_username]/Documents/backpackit/cron.weekly.sh ]; then echo "--------------------------------------------" echo "running weekly backpack backup script" ## runs the shell script sh /Users/[your_username]/Documents/backpackit/cron.weekly.sh echo "weekly backpack backup done" echo "--------------------------------------------" fi

monthly: (/private/etc/periodic/monthly/500.monthly)

## backpack monthly backup script ################ ## checks if the shell script file exists if [ -f /Users/[your_username]/Documents/backpackit/cron.monthly.sh ]; then echo "--------------------------------------------" echo "running monthly backpack backup script" ## runs the shell script sh /Users/[your_username]/Documents/backpackit/cron.monthly.sh echo "monthly backpack backup done" echo "--------------------------------------------" fi

note: this locations are for MacOS X 10.4.3 Tiger

final notes:

• please be aware that the -r option (recursive) can add a lot of overhead to your process and your connection, mostly if you keep the retry option (-t[n of retries]) high.
• more information about wget commands in the wget online manual