Script for Comparing directories and file from a text file

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hello all,
I need to write a script which has following requirement:

Need to read the filenames from text file and then search for the above read files in the required directory and if match found backup them in a backup folder.
And also need to compare and verify whether the files in the two directories are same.
(need to verify time stamps and files sizes too.)

The text file is like below :

Please help.

2 
 
while read f x
 do
  if [ ! -f $f ]
   then
    echo No $f
    continue
   fi
  if [ "$(cmp $f backup_place 2>&1)" = "" ]
   then
    echo Already same: $f
    continue
   fi
  cp -p $f backup_place/$f
  if [ $? = 0 ]
   then
    echo Backed up: $f
   else
    echo FATAL Backup error: $f
    exit 1
   fi
 done < list
3

Thanks DGPickett,

Actual script to be written as :

Please help.

4

Does the search just compare name or content, too?

5

It should compare the content, size and permission of all files and directories.
Please let me know if you have any further question.

6

cksum is a nice way to detect different content. It prints size. ls and when available find -ls print permissions. It seems like some combination would do it. Do you care about directory size in bytes, or just new entries?

7

Sorry for late reply,

Just new entries will be fine.

Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Regards,
Saurau

8

Sometimes it is cheaper and simpler to just hard code setting the group, owner, permissions unconditionally than to fetch and compare.

You might want to look into sticky group and sticky id directories, see man chmod.

Even copying files might be cheaper than comparing the innards, especially moving or hard linking files.

Trimming: should the directories only contail these files. Nicer architectures store the working and temp data files for runtime in a different subtree from the delivered code, so this is a simple question. I often teach that what you buy should be segregated from what you download and use as is should be segregated from what you write should be segregated from the data it manipulates, for each user where applicable. Then you can clean any subtree for an upgrade of that part of the system. Odd files can destabilize the product and invalidate the testing.