Backing up your files periodically

The following script periodically (every 15 minutes) backs up a given directory to a specified backup directory. You can run this script in the background while you work in the directory. An example use may be as shown below.

backup1.sh cs253 /tmp/cs253.backup &

#!/bin/sh
# recursive/backup1.sh

prog=`basename $0`
case $# in
0|1) echo 'Usage:' $prog '<original dir> <backup dir>'; exit 1;;
esac

orig=$1
backup=$2
interval=900 #backup every 15 minutes

while true
do
    if test -d $backup
    then
        /bin/rm -fr $backup
    fi
    echo "Creating the directory copy at" `date`
    /bin/cp -pr $orig $backup
    sleep $interval
done