Adding a reminder notification in XFCE systray that I should launch a backup script

I’ve started using borg and borgmatic for backups of my machines. I won’t be using a fully automated backup via a crontab for a start. Instead, I’ve added a recurrent reminder system that will appear on my XFCE desktop to tell me it may be time to do backups.

I’m using yad (a zenity on steroids) to add notifications in the desktop via an anacron.

The notification icon, when clicked, will start a shell script that performs the backups, starting borgmatic.

Here are some bits of my setup :

crontab -l excerpt:

@hourly /usr/sbin/anacron -s -t $HOME/.anacron/etc/anacrontab -S $HOME/.anacron/spool

~/.anacron/etc/anacrontab excerpt:

7 15      borgmatic-home  /home/olivier/bin/backup-only-home.sh

The idea of this anacrontab is to remind me weekly that I should do a backup, 15 minutes after I’ve booted the machine. Another reminding mechanism may be more handy… time will tell.

Then, the backup-only-home.sh script :

notify-send 'Borg backups at home!' "It's time to do a backup." --icon=document-save

# borrowed from https://sourceforge.net/p/yad-dialog/wiki/NotificationIcon/

# create a FIFO file, used to manage the I/O redirection from shell
PIPE=$(mktemp -u --tmpdir ${0##*/}.XXXXXXXX)
mkfifo $PIPE

# attach a file descriptor to the file
exec 3<> $PIPE

# add handler to manage process shutdown
function on_exit() {
 echo "quit" >&3
 rm -f $PIPE
}
trap on_exit EXIT

# add handler for tray icon left click
function on_click() {
 # echo "pid: $YAD_PID"
 echo "icon:document-save" >/proc/$YAD_PID/fd/3
 echo "visible:blink" >/proc/$YAD_PID/fd/3
 xterm -e bash -c "/home/olivier/bin/borgmatic.sh --verbosity 1 -c /home/olivier/borgmatic/home-config.yaml; read -p 'Press any key ...'"
 echo "quit" >/proc/$YAD_PID/fd/3
 # kill -INT $YAD_PID
}
export -f on_click

# create the notification icon
yad --notification \
 --listen \
 --image="appointment-soon" \
 --text="Click icon to start borgmatic backup at home" \
 --command="bash -c on_click $YAD_PID" <&3

The script will start yad so that it displays an icon in the systray. When the icon is clicked, it will start borgmatic, after having changed the icon. Borgmatic will be started inside an xterm so as to get passphrase input, and display messages. Once borgmatic is done backing up, yad will be terminated.

There may be a more elegant way to pass commands to yad listening on file descriptor 3/pipe, but I couldn’t figure out, so the /proc hack. This works on Linux… but not sure in other Unices.

Hope this helps.