mjhjmtu

On my debian 9.4 machine I have a script that automatically compresses & backups up all my files in a srv/ with the date in the name xx-xx-xxxx.tar. It is moved to my backups/ directory.

I would like to limit the amount of .tar files (backups) to 10 in the folder, and remove the oldest .tar file every time a new tar is created.

What would be the best way of going about this? Here is my script:

#!/bin/bash
#Purpose = Backup of Important Data
#Created on 17-1-2012
#Author = Hafiz Haider
#Version 1.0
#START
TIME=`date +%b-%d-%y` # This Command will add date in Backup File Na$
FILENAME=backup-$TIME.tar.gz # Here i define Backup file name format.
SRCDIR=/srv/daemon-data # Location of Important Data Directo$
DESDIR=/backups # Destination of backup file.
tar -cpzf $DESDIR/$FILENAME $SRCDIR 
#END

Add the following in the script towards the end:

find "$DESDIR/$FILENAME" -type f -mtime +10 -delete

This will find your backup file (tar.gz) in the directory and delete any backup that is more than 10 days older.

You want the same logic that is used by the system utility logrotate(8), which can be configured to keep up to a maximum number of files. In user space, there are a number of logrotate-like utilities, as described in this answer: https://superuser.com/a/868519

That being said, a simple configuration file like

"/home/coolman/backups" 
 rotate 10

should work with the command line

/usr/sbin/logrotate -s $HOME/backups.state -f $HOME/backups.config