I wrote this yesterday and I use it from a remote machine to backup my mail and stuff.
First, to make the ssh login quick and easy:
ssh-keygen -t rsa
scp .ssh/id_rsa.pub root@MailServer.local:.ssh/authorized_keys
Then, I run:
mkdir ~/baks
And after that, I save this script somewhere and add it to my crontab:
#!/bin/sh
# Machine to login to. This script will do ssh $USER@$MACHINE
USER="root"
MACHINE="MailServer.local"
# Remote dir's to backup
LIST="/home /etc /var/lib/dpkg"
BACKDIR="$HOME/baks"
###############################
# No more configuration options
YEAR=`date "+%Y"`
MONTH=`date "+%B"`
DAY=`date "+%d"`
BACKDIR="$BACKDIR/$MACHINE/"
for d in $LIST; do
if ! [ -d $BACKDIR ]; then
mkdir $BACKDIR
fi
if ! [ -d $BACKDIR/$YEAR ]; then
mkdir $BACKDIR/$YEAR
fi
if ! [ -d $BACKDIR/$YEAR/$MONTH ]; then
mkdir $BACKDIR/$YEAR/$MONTH
fi
if ! [ -d $BACKDIR/$YEAR/$MONTH/$DAY ]; then
mkdir $BACKDIR/$YEAR/$MONTH/$DAY
fi
FILENAME=`echo $d | sed 's/\///'`
FILENAME=`echo $FILENAME | sed 's/\//./g'`
ssh $USER@$MACHINE "tar zcpf - $d" | cat > $BACKDIR/$YEAR/$MONTH/$DAY/$FILENAME.tgz
done
When the script runs, it creates the directory's for the machine, year, month, and day. It then runs tar on the remote machine and cat's it to a tgz file.
Just posting this here so it may help someone :)