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Script To Backup Email

I was looking at a script I inherited from the previous admin that works quite nice. It is a basic bash script that that deletes the user from mail groups (mailman) and also backs up their current email into a nice tarball and then removes their mail / shell account from the email server.

Now the script moves the backup tarball to a directory called /var/backup and I will show what I see...

Code:

[root@mail /]# cd /var/backup/

[root@mail backup]# ls -l

total 1120020

-rw-r--r--  1 root root  6537216 Jan 25  2007 -01-25-2007_10-44.tar.gz

-rw-r--r--  1 root root  10673918 Jul  9 10:16 abashir-07-09-2007_10-16.tar.bz2

-rw-r--r--  1 root root      1292 Jul 10 08:18 amaldonado-07-10-2007_08-18.tar.bz2

-rw-r--r--  1 root root  3205294 Feb  5  2007 cnguyen-02-05-2007_11-09.tar.gz

-rw-r--r--  1 root root  2740685 Mar  9  2007 cweiler-03-09-2007_13-07.tar.gz

-rw-r--r--  1 root root    10818 Apr 16 14:36 dbennett-04-16-2007_14-36.tar.gz

-rw-r--r--  1 root root  3064447 Feb 16  2007 dcasey-02-16-2007_09-30.tar.gz

-rw-r--r--  1 root root      9053 Apr  2 15:33 dcocchi-04-02-2007_15-33.tar.gz

-rw-r--r--  1 root root    44856 Mar 31 08:03 decheverria-03-31-2007_08-03.tar.gz

-rw-r--r--  1 root root    32379 Apr  4 08:28 dfranck-04-04-2007_08-28.tar.gz

Yeah so I wanted to clean this up manually and the first one for some reason can't be deleted. I don't know why.

Code:

[root@mail backup]# rm -01-25-2007_10-44.tar.gz 

rm: invalid option -- 0

Try `rm --help' for more information.

[root@mail backup]# rm -rf -01-25-2007_10-44.tar.gz 

rm: invalid option -- 0

Try `rm --help' for more information.

Any thoughts?

From what i see in your command, you are trying to pass the parameter "-01-25-2007_10-44.tar.gz" to rm which of course does not exist.

Try:

[root@mail backup]# rm -i *-01-25-2007_10-44.tar.gz

The -i makes the command interactive, always good while you are root and the * makes the wildcard select everything before the -01-25-2007_10-44.tar.gz

You can also try either quotes "" or the back ticks ` to isolate the file name.

Good luck!

I have no idea why I can't remove this file...

Code:

[root@mail backup]# rm -i *-01-25-2007_10-44.tar.gz

rm: invalid option -- 0

Try `rm --help' for more information.

Code:

[root@mail backup]# file -01-25-2007_10-44.tar.gz 

file: invalid option -- 0

file: invalid option -- 1

file: invalid option -- -

file: invalid option -- 2

file: invalid option -- 5

file: invalid option -- -

file: invalid option -- 2

file: invalid option -- 0

file: invalid option -- 0

file: invalid option -- 7

file: invalid option -- _

file: invalid option -- 1

file: invalid option -- 0

file: invalid option -- -

file: invalid option -- 4

file: invalid option -- 4

file: invalid option -- .

file: invalid option -- t

file: invalid option -- a

file: invalid option -- .

file: invalid option -- g

Usage: file [-bcikLnNsvz] [-f namefile] [-F separator] [-m magicfiles] file...

      file -C -m magicfiles

Try `file --help' for more information.

Ok first of all, never answer questions before the first cup of coffee. My first answer will not work.

Lets find the inode number of the file.

[root@mail backup]# ls -li

655428 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6537216 Jan 25 2007 -01-25-2007_10-44.tar.gz

now let remove the inode

[root@mail backup]# find . -inum 655428 -exec rm -i {} \;

Where the inode number is the first number reported from ls.

Thanks for the morning challenge.

Now that the coffee is kicking in...

After you have cleaned up the file, you should modify your backup script and replace the dash "-" with an underscore "_" between your user's name and the date. This will help prevent similar problems in the future.

Back to work now!

Thanks !!!

That worked!