Installation procedure

Python

Python version 3 must be installed to make this application work.

Once you have python installed, I recommend to setup a virtual environment to make this drive-backup working. This will avoid possible conflicts with dependencies from other projects.

To do so, make sure that virtualenv is installed in your computer by running one of the following:

$ virtualenv
$ python -m venv

One of both above will work. After that, create a virtual environment. For this example we will call it drive-backup:

$ python -m venv drive-backup

Next step is activate this virtual enviroment, by running the activate or activate.bat command. You will see that this is achieved because the prompt will change:

$ cd drive-backup
drive-backup$ source ./bin/activate 
(drive-backup) drive-backup$

Now we are ready to install the google libraries for authentication and for managing the google api:

(drive-backup) drive-backup$ pip install pyaml
(drive-backup) drive-backup$ pip install --upgrade google-api-python-client 
(drive-backup) drive-backup$ pip install google-auth-oauthlib

We are ready for deploy the application

Grab the latest release of the application and uncompress it:

(drive-backup) drive-backup$ unzip google-drive-backup_XXXX.zip

Config many things

logging.json

The entry filename must be configured to indicate where the log files will be placed:

"filename" : "drive-backup.log",

By default they are left in a file calle google-drive.log, but they can be left wherever you want. In a linux system, a good place is /var/log/drive-backup.

BTW, you can configure the maximum size of the logging file and the number of log files to keep.

config.json

Create a config.json file by renaming the provided example-config.json:

$ mv example-config.json config.json

And do the necessary configurations:

"emailFrom" : "YOUR GOOGLE EMAIL ACCOUNT HERE", 
"emailTo" : ["A LIST OF EMAILS TO NOTIFY, CAN BE LEFT EMPTY"],

runBefore, runAfter

These are placeholders to run additional commands that must be run before the backup is made and after the backup is made. You can leave them empty if you don't have anything to run:

"//2" : "config of directories / files to backup", 
"runBefore" : [],
"runAfter" : [],

Or -let's say- you need to run a script to make a full backup of your database. In that case, you can place something like:

"//2" : "config of directories / files to backup", 
"runBefore" : [ "/root/full-backup-database.sh" ],
"runAfter" : [ "/root/clean-last-backup.sh" ],

resourcesToBackup

The next step is to properly configure the list of folders or files to make backup:

"resourcesToBackup" : [ "/my_very_important_dir" ],

windows users bear in mind you will have to use backslashes and double backslash:

"resourcesToBackup" : [ "c:\\my_very_important_dir" ],

verifyUploadedFiles

I recommend set this to "true": it will make an MD5 sum of the remote and local files and check that they match.

dailyPolicyFolder, monthlyPolicyFolder, yearlyPolicyFolder

How the folders for daily, monthly and yearly copies be called. You can leave them as is.

drive_backup.sh

You have to configure properly the script drive_backup.sh. Edit it, and perform the following change:

drive_backup_home="PUT-HERE-THE-HOME-OF-YOUR-APPLICATION"

This is the directory where you have created the virtual environment.

VERY IMPORTANT: give execution permissions to this script by running:

$ chmod u+x drive_backup.sh

drive_backup.cmd

The same changes done for the linux script have to be made for the windows users on this line:

set drive_backup_home=CONFIGURE HERE

And we are ready to run

Now you can run the application like this:

$ ./drive_backup.sh

The first time you run the application, it will request for permission to access your google drive and gmail showing a screen like this: