Automatic Backup when Drive Plugged In

[Paul Morgan]

On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 05:39:24PM -0400, Chris Tyler wrote:
> I was browsing the website of a computer supplier and saw an ad for an
> HP "Simple Save" external disk drive, which automatically initiates a
> hard disk backup (on Windows) when the disk is plugged into a USB port.
> 
> Later this year I'll be sending my daughter to University with a
> Fedora-loaded laptop (she grew up on Linux :-) and have been thinking
> about backup options for her -- and this sounded like a cool approach.
> Instead of the unsafe autorun-file technique, though, I picture an app
> that would check the UUID on disks (or the maybe the FS volume name) as
> they are plugged in, and when a UUID is recognized, backup would
> automagically commence.
> 
> But before I go off and write such a tool ... anyone know of an existing
> apps that does this? (yum search doesn't seem to be finding any likely
> candidates).

To trigger a backup via one of the utilities in the Fedora repos,
you could try a udev rule to detect when the "backup" disk is plugged in.

For example rules, see:
* http://www.redhat.com/magazine/002dec04/features/udev/
* rpm -qd udev
* http://tinyurl.com/udev-sample

The part you're interested in is RUN+= and
documented in the udev package (rpm -qd udev).

NOTE: The tinyurl redirects to
https://github.com/jumanjiman/external-disk/raw/master/src/75-external-disk.rules

hth,
-paul