Update: I made additional changes to the script which are a real improvement for my daily use. The current version is “0.3d [2010-01-08]”

Last week I wrote about a simple way to zip all subfolders of a specific folder which I use for my simple archiving strategy at work. Today I would like to show you a simple script I wrote which backups files listed in a configuration file using rar and puts them into a single archive named after the current date and time. I wrote it to be used as a scheduled task that runs every few hours on some windows machine that is always on.¹

I will not show the complete code here, since it’s about 150 lines. You can download the whole script package as .zip-archive.

The archive contains four files:

The following settings are available:

¹ The reason for using a batch script and a Windows machine is simple: They do not use linux here. Though I might get my own litte Debian VM in the future, for now Windows has to suffice.

² The reason for using RAR is simple: It comes preinstalled on all machines here.

At my current workplace, working with Linux (or anything other than windows) seems to be something no one would even bother to think about.  So I had to dig into the world of Windows Batch Scripting in order to create those little tools that make my life  just a bit easier when using linux.

The first thing I had to do was creating a script that simply backups folders. I have a folder which contains other folders that should be archived – I usually zip (or 7zip) them and move them to the backup space later, which is a fairly easy task using a bash-script and nautilus actions.

Under windows it’s not that much harder to accomplish. (In the following example I used WinRAR to compress the files because that’s what we use at work.)

The first thing I needed was of course the batch-file that does the actual work. Here it is:

@echo off

rem ===================== Begin Configuration =====================
rem !!! Do not use quotes for the values of the following variables !!!

rem Path to the WinRAR executable file
set winrarPath=%PROGRAMFILES%\WinRAR\WinRAR.exe

rem ====================== End Configuration ======================

rem Please only edit after this line if you know exactly what you are doing.

set curVer=0.1 [2009-11-26]

rem ======================== Begin Script ========================

rem Tell the user which version of the tool they use
echo.
echo                     Mi ArchiveSubfolders version %curVer%
echo.
echo.

if not exist "%winrarPath%" (
    echo Cannot find WinRAR exe file: %winrarPath%
    goto eof
)

set dir=%*
if not exist "%dir%" (
    echo The directory "%dir%" cannot be found
    goto eof
)

set dateString=%DATE:~-4,4%-%DATE:~-7,2%-%DATE:~0,2%_%TIME:~0,2%-%TIME:~3,2%-%TIME:~6,2%

cd "%dir%"
for /D %%a in (*) do (
    rem Creating the archive
    echo Archiving "%%~na"...
    "%winrarPath%" M -afzip -ibck -inul -m5 "%dateString%-%%~na.zip" "%%a"
)

echo.
echo Archiving done

:eof

Now that is a nice, simple script, but what should I do with it? I wanted it to be useable directly in the explorer context-menu, so I made a small registry-entry. This is the exported .reg-file:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell\archiveSubfolders]
@="Mi: Archive Subfolders (ZIP)"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell\archiveSubfolders\Command]
@="cmd /c \"\"%%ProgramFiles%%\\MiTools\\archiveSubfolders\\archiveSubfolders.bat\"\" %1"

Now I wanted a simple installation-script, for really lazy people like me:

@echo off

set installDir=%PROGRAMFILES%\MiTools\archiveSubfolders

if not exist "%installDir%" (
    mkdir "%installDir%"
)

copy archiveSubfolders.bat "%installDir%"
copy "ArchiveSubfolders Context Menu Entry.reg" "%installDir%"

regedit /S "ArchiveSubfolders Context Menu Entry.reg"

echo Installation complete.

:eof

Ich komprimiere meine Dateien fast immer mit 7z, nur wenn ich Quellcode weitergebe nutze ich das traditionelle tar.bz2. Vor allem habe ich mir angewöhnt alles was ich an CD und DVD Images besitze vor dem verschieben auf die Backupplatte noch einmal zu komprimieren – der Zugriff muss ja nicht schnell gehen, sondern im Optimalfall nicht einmal nötig sein.

Da ich in diesem Fall keine Rücksicht auf irgend wen nehmen muss, kann ich die Parameter so wählen, dass ein für meinen Rechner optimale Komprimierung herauskommt – auch wenn es sich deshalb auf Rechnern mit wenig Arbeitsspeicher nicht mehr entpacken lassen würde.

Mein Kommando zur Komprimierung lautet (Achtung, nicht auf Systemen nutzen die weniger als 4GB Hauptspeicher haben):
nice -n 10 7z a -mx=9 -mmt=16 -t7z -mfb=258 -md=384m -ms=8g "[ZIEL].7z" "[DATEN]"

Kurze Erklärung:

Um dann viele Images über Nacht zu komprimieren benutze ich folgendes Mini-Script:

#!/bin/bash
for i in *.iso; do
nice -n 10 7z a -mx=9 -mmt=16 -t7z -mfb=258 -md=384m -ms=8g "$i.7z" "$i"
if [[ $? -eq 0 && -f "$i.7z" ]]; then
rm "$i"
fi
done


Update 2009-09-13: New version. Can now work around WP-Cache

GRAND Flash Album Gallery is a simple to use and professional looking way to present pictures on your website, it even has a nice looking full-screen-option.

There were two features that I really missed:

• Ability to link to a specific gallery and picture
• Removing the [Gallery not found]-tags from excerpts

For those two I wrote my own little plugin called “flash-album-gallery-extras“.
It is more of a quickhack than a real plugin because I had to change the central xml.php file that comes with the Flash Album Gallery Skins (which is used to output an ordered xml-list of the pictures grouped by galleries) and because I use two Session-variables to “communicate” with the xml.php. Changing the flash that requests the xml to using additional GET-Parameters would be a cleaner approach, but that would require the authors help.

Maybe he likes my approach and integrates my code (or my idea) into his original solution.

Hier die Beschreibung der Kommandozeilenoptionen:

        -----===== createMultiDesktopWallpaper =====-----

 "createMultiDesktopWallpaper --of=OUTFILE sf=SEARCHFOLDER  RES1 RES2 [RES3 [...]]"

Concatenates the images in the given order and writes the result to the file
specified by --of

Obligatory parameters:
 --of=         The out-file, meaning the file to write the concatenated image
               to. This file will be overwritten without notice.
 --sf=         The folder to search in for images.
 RES[1-x]      The resolution of the Desktops for which the background should
               be created from left to right. The RES-parameters must have the
               form of WIDTHxHEIGHT (e.g. '1280x1024'). There have to be at least
               two RES-parameters

Optional parameters:
 --mode=       The mode for choosing the images. Possible values:
                 exact  - For every resolution an image with exactly the given
                          size is used. No resizing of images.
                 exact2 - Like exact, but needs a preordered search-folder. Use the
                          orderImagesByResolution script to order it. (Faster)
                 down   - Uses images that are at least as big as the given size
                          and resizes bigger images. This might lead to images being
                          cropped because they have a differnt ratio.
                 any    - Resizes any picture to the given resolution. This might
                          look bad if you have for example a 24" monitor and some
                          640x480 images in the search-folder
               Default: exact
 --background= The color of the background if the pictures do not have the same
               size. (default: black)
 --same        Use the same image for all resolutions. Only works with mode 'down'
               or 'any'
 --align=      Vertical alignment of images that are smaller that the biggest
               image given
 --verbose     Output additional information

Example:
   "createMultiDesktopWallpaper --of=bg.png --sf=Pictures 1920x1200 1280x1024"

Um das Script zu benutzen benötigt man ImageMagick und die Scripte createMultiDesktopWallpaper und concatenateImage. Wenn man die Geschwindigkeit optimieren will, kann man das orderImagesByResolution Script benutzen um die Bilder vorher zu ordnen und dann den Modus “exact2″ nutzen.

Das Ergebnis sieht dann bei 1920×1200 und 1280×1024 z.B. so aus: (Aus zwei Photos die ich gemacht habe)

Generiertes Wallpaper

Eine andere Sprache als bash wäre bezüglich Caching sicher sinnvoll gewesen, aber nicht bei meiner kleinen Auswahl an Wallpapern lohnt sich ein Caching Mechanismus noch nicht. Natürlich lässt sich ein Dateibasiertes Caching auch mit bash realisieren, aber besonders elegant geht das nunmal auch nicht.

Heute habe ich mir mal die Mühe gemacht eines meiner größeren Scripte so umzuschreiben, dass es als allgemeine Vorlage genutzt werden kann. Vielleicht hilft es ja jemandem.

Das Bash Script Template kann man sich hier herunterladen.

Das “Besondere” an dieser Scriptvorlage ist dass für die Hilfe alle Texte am Anfang des Script als Variablen definiert werden und die Parameter mit der vorgegebenen Methode in beliebiger Reihenfolge an das Programm übergeben werden können.

Über Rückmeldungen und Verbesserungsvorschläge freue ich mich immer.