I recently put together a simple backup system in Bash that pushes my backups to Dropbox

So, about recovery. I managed to restore my tabs and parts of my browsing history, though I wasn’t entirely sure how everything came back. The history part made sense — I had Firefox Sync enabled, so once I logged back in, it pulled some data from my account. But the tabs were the real surprise. I use the Simple Tab Groups extension, and it turns out it had been quietly backing up my tab groups all along. That’s what saved me. I was able to recover tabs I had accumulated over the last four years.

After that crash, I realized I don’t want to rely on luck again. That’s when I decided to build my own backup system. This is actually my first Bash script — before this, I’d only heard about Bash but never built anything with it. Initially, I focused on backing up Firefox configs, but then it clicked: I could extend this to cover everything important. Now it backs up my configs, documents, SSH keys, and more — all automatically, without relying on third-party tools. For personal use, it feels solid, though I’m still figuring out how effective it really is long-term. Either way, I like it, and I’m motivated to keep improving it.

#!/bin/bash

set -e

echo "Starting full backup..."

BASE="$HOME/Dropbox/Backups"
DATE=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M")

# Sources
FIREFOX_SRC="/firefox"
KDBX_SRC="$HOME/documents"
SSH_SRC="$HOME/.ssh"
CONFIGS_SRC="$HOME/configs"

# Dest folders
FIREFOX_DIR="$BASE/firefox"
KDBX_DIR="$BASE/passwords"
SSH_DIR="$BASE/ssh"
CONFIGS_DIR="$BASE/configs"

mkdir -p "$FIREFOX_DIR" "$KDBX_DIR" "$SSH_DIR" "CONFIGS_DIR"

# -------------------------
# Firefox backup
# -------------------------
echo "Backing up Firefox..."

TMP_DIR=$(mktemp -d)

rsync -a "$FIREFOX_SRC/" "$TMP_DIR/firefox"

FIREFOX_ARCHIVE="$FIREFOX_DIR/firefox-$DATE.tar.gz"

tar -czf "$FIREFOX_ARCHIVE" -C "$TMP_DIR" firefox

rm -rf "$TMP_DIR"

# keep only last 4 backups
ls -1t "$FIREFOX_DIR"/firefox-*.tar.gz 2>/dev/null | tail -n +5 | xargs -r rm -f
# -------------------------
# Password DB backup
# -------------------------
echo "Backing up password database..."

KDBX_ARCHIVE="$KDBX_DIR/passwords-$DATE.KZN"
cp "$KDBX_SRC" "$KDBX_ARCHIVE"

ls -1t "$KDBX_DIR"/passwords-*.KZN 2>/dev/null | tail -n +5 | xargs -r rm -f

# -------------------------
# Configs backup
# -------------------------
echo "Backing up configs..."

CONFIG_ARCHIVE="$CONFIGS_DIR/configs-$DATE.tar.gz"

tar -czf "$CONFIG_ARCHIVE" -C "$HOME" ".config" 2>/dev/null || true

ls -1t "$CONFIGS_DIR"/configs-*.tar.gz 2>/dev/null | tail -n +5 | xargs -r rm -f

# -------------------------
# SSH keys backup (ENCRYPTED)
# -------------------------
echo "Backing up SSH keys (encrypted)..."

SSH_ARCHIVE_TMP="$SSH_DIR/ssh-$DATE.tar.gz"
SSH_ARCHIVE="$SSH_ARCHIVE_TMP.gpg"

tar -czf "$SSH_ARCHIVE_TMP" -C "$HOME" ".ssh"

gpg --batch --yes \
    --passphrase-file "$HOME/backup_system/.backup_gpg_pass" \
    --symmetric \
    --cipher-algo AES256 \
    "$SSH_ARCHIVE_TMP"

rm "$SSH_ARCHIVE_TMP"

# keep only last 4 SSH backups
ls -1t "$SSH_DIR"/ssh-*.tar.gz.gpg 2>/dev/null | tail -n +5 | xargs -r rm -f

# -------------------------
# Telegram notification
# -------------------------
BOT_TOKEN="telegram_token_id"
CHAT_ID="telegram_chat_id"

MSG="Backup SUCCESS on $(date)"

curl -s -X POST "https://api.telegram.org/bot$BOT_TOKEN/sendMessage" \
-d chat_id="$CHAT_ID" \
-d text="$MSG"

The script itself is pretty straightforward. It defines a set of source directories and destination folders inside my Dropbox backup directory. It then archives everything with timestamps and keeps only the most recent backups to avoid clutter. Once the files land in the Dropbox folder, syncing takes care of the rest automatically.

One thing I paid special attention to was security. When I got to backing up my .ssh directory, I realized I couldn’t just store those keys as-is. So I added encryption using AES256 via GPG. That way, even if someone somehow gets access to the backup, the sensitive data stays protected. Of course, this adds a bit of friction — to restore those files, I need to use a passphrase stored in a separate file — but that’s a trade-off I’m fine with.

I also integrated the script with cron, so it runs automatically at scheduled times. That was an important step. I didn’t want backups to depend on me remembering to run them. Now it just happens in the background, which reduces the risk of human error and makes the whole system feel much more reliable.