variables in filenames

[JohnHaggerty]

Hi folks,

I'm a newbie who has just migrated from Win 10 to Mint 19. On Windows I used SyncBackSE for backups and will be using FreeFileSync on Mint.

I've had a read of external-applications and topics p11941, p10555, p20842, etc. but they don't seem cover what I'd like to do. (I realise I can write a script to set %Right_Target_Path% and run it using a command line but I was hoping for something easier/simpler.)

The setup I had on Windows, and which I'd like to replicate with FFS, was as follows:
- each source (e.g. C:\live_files\*.*) had a primary and a secondary mirror and was copied on a schedule to separate SSDs (F: and G:)
- non-volatile data (e.g. archives, music) was backed up to a non-time-differentiated directory structure - e.g. F:\music_backups\
- volatile data was backed up to daily, weekly, monthly and annual backup directory structures - e.g. F:\daily_backups\Mon\, F:\weekly_backups\Week_1\, F:\monthly_backups\Jan\, F:\annual_backups\2019\, etc.

Given the age of the earlier posts I suspect that this isn't something that's in the pipeline at present.

All help will be most welcome.

(There's a full list of SyncBackSE variables, etc. on the 2brightsparks website.)

Regards,

John

[Plerry]

Did you check out the use of Macros ?

[JohnHaggerty]

Thanks Plerry,

As I said, I'm a newbie.

I can use %year%, 'month_%month%' (instead of 'Jan', etc.), and %weekday% (instead of 'Sun', etc.).

I can also use 'week_%week%' but, as there's no %WEEKOFTHEMONTH% equivalent, I'll need to manipulate it so as to cycle every few weeks, or keep only the last few weekly backups.

Regards,

John

[Gianni1962]

Try resubmitting this as a [Feature Request] in the "General discussion" section giving also this link as a reference:
Variables defined/managed by SyncBack

But probably you can create the few variables you need in a .bat script that than launches FFS.

[JohnHaggerty]

Hi Gianni,

Given that there's been no great clamour for such things I just wrote a script instead.

I'm happy to provide a copy to anyone who wants one.

Regards,

John

[Gianni1962]

Hi John,

I'm interested, thanks!

[JohnHaggerty]

Hi Gianni,

ISO 8601 doesn't specify what "week_of_the_month" is so I chose to define mine as being relative to the week_number of the week containing the first day of the month. Subtracting 1 from the week_number of the first day of the month gives an offset. Subtracting the offset from the week_number of any day in the same month gives my "week_of_the_month".

I'm attaching a .txt copy of the script which I use to run FFS batch jobs.

It also does some pre- and post-FFS housekeeping.

I had a few problems getting it to work via cron - details in the 'running batch jobs via Linux cron' thread.

It looks prettier in xed, without the .txt, but I couldn't attach it without an extension.

Let me know if you want any more info.

Regards,

John

run_FFS.txt