How to send backup copies of Raspberry Pi files to email

The Raspberry Pi is a miracle for low-cost, compact computing. Users of the Pi often run important projects or store valuable data on their devices. However, like any other computer system, Raspberry Pi is not immune to hardware failures, data loss, and many other problems.

Therefore, creating regular backups is essential to protect your files and data. But it would be great if you could automate this process and even, send backups directly to your email. This article will guide you from creating a backup to installing and configuring the necessary software, scheduling tasks, and finally emailing with the backup.

All you need is a command line email client and of course a Raspberry Pi board.

Create a Raspberry Pi . Backup

The first step in this process is to create a backup copy of the files you want to protect. On the Raspberry Pi, this can be easily done with the tar command. For example, to backup the directory /home/pi/my_data , you would use the following command:

tar -zcvf /path/to/my_data_backup.tar.gz /home/pi/my_data

Install required software

Once you've created your backup, you'll need a way to email it. To do this, use Mutt, a command line email client. To install Mutt on your Raspberry Pi, type:

sudo apt-get install mutt

Configure software Mutt

After installing Mutt, you will need to configure it to send email. Create a configuration file for Mutt at ~/.muttrc with the following content:

set from = "username@gmail.com" set realname = "First Last" # IMAP settings set imap_user = "username@gmail.com" set imap_pass = "" # SMTP settings set smtp_url = "smtps://username@smtp.gmail.com" set smtp_pass = "" # Remote Gmail folders set folder = "imaps://imap.gmail.com/" set spoolfile = "+INBOX"

Schedule a backup task

To ensure your files are backed up regularly, you can schedule the backup job to run automatically on a set schedule. This can be done with cron, the built-in task scheduler in Linux. To open the cron editor, use the command crontab -e . Add the following line to schedule a backup task to run every day at 2am:

0 2 * * * tar -zcvf /path/to/my_data_backup.tar.gz /home/pi/my_data

You can learn how to handle this type of expression at Crontab Guru.

Email backups

Finally, you can use Mutt to email backups. Here is the command you will need:

echo "Here is your daily backup" | mutt -a "/path/to/my_data_backup.tar.gz" -s "Daily Backup" -- "your-email@example.com"

Remember to properly enter your own email address when assigned.

Enjoy automatic backups

Ensuring the integrity and safety of your data is very important, especially when working on projects or storing important information on the Raspberry Pi. While creating regular and manual backups is a good practice, automating this process and sending those backups to email not only saves time, but also provides you with a layer of security. additional.

While it may seem like a complicated process at first, we assure you that the benefits far outweigh the initial effort. You can never predict when a system failure or data loss will occur, so creating regular and accessible backups is a lifesaver in those cases.

Lesley Montoya

Update 27 June 2023