lex-2008/abook2git

backup Baikal addressbook to git

abook2git

A script to backup Baikal addressbook to git

Reason: if you store your addressbook on a self-hosted Baïkal server (meaning you have access to its db.sqlite file), you might want to save all contacts (vcards) to plaintext files and put them in git.

It will help in case you accidentally delete 50 less-frequently-used contacts from it, and realise it only half a year later (happened to me).

Alternatively, you can use a WebDAV-interface access to the addressbook, and with help of something like davfs access all your contacts as plain files. Then you don't need this script and can just copy them to a git repo, git add, git commit, and git push! (check maybegit function in the script file for exact set of commands)

Requirements

• Self-hosted Baïkal server (so you have access to its db.sqlite file)

• A working backup system (so you have a copy of the above file, which inode number changes every time there is a change) - simplest it just to use rsync to copy that file somewhere

• A private git repo (github gives you few for free)

• sqlite3 and sqldiff utilities - while script might be adapted to work without the second one, I haven't done so yet.

Installation

1. clone this repo (or just take the abook2git.sh file)

2. On the same partition where you have your backup version of db.sqlite file, find a place to keep its hardlink (it will be used to check for changes).

3. clone or init a private repo somewhere

Usage

After your normal backup procedure (which includes rsync'ing db.sqlite from Baikal server to a backup place), cd into directory with your private repo, and run:

path/to/abook2git.sh path/to/rsynced/db.sqlite path/to/its/hardlink "$(date +"%F %T")"

How it works

To quickly check if there were any changes in the database, this script checks if the hardlink is still in place (first two arguments to the script point to the same file). This script relies on rsync (or other utility) to detect change in the database and break the hardlink.

After that, it exports all contacts into *.vcf files (one file per user), and commits them to git, using output of sqldiff --summary as the commit message.