Vacuum cleaning of $HOME to back it up

I've started with a simple script to compress Firefox's sqlite databases before creating a backup of my $HOME directory

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alex@xubuntu:~$ cat bin/vacuumFirefox.sh #!/bin/bash   [ -n "$(pidof firefox)" ] && {   echo "ERROR: firefox is still running, close it first!"   exit 1 }   counterBefore=0 counterAfter=0   for i in ~/.mozilla/firefox/*/*.sqlite; do   fileSizeBefore=$(du -b $i|awk '{ print $1 }')   counterBefore=$((counterBefore + fileSizeBefore))   sqlite3 "$i" vacuum   fileSizeAfter=$(du -b $i|awk '{ print $1 }')   counterAfter=$((counterAfter + fileSizeAfter))   echo "$fileSizeBefore $fileSizeAfter - $(basename $i)" done echo "Bytes saved: $(( counterBefore - counterAfter ))"

Here is a sample output:

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alex@xubuntu:~$ bin/vacuumFirefox.sh 589824 589824 - addons.sqlite 98304 98304 - chromeappsstore.sqlite 7168 7168 - content-prefs.sqlite 524288 4096 - cookies.sqlite 6144 3072 - downloads.sqlite 589824 589824 - extensions.sqlite 196608 163840 - forecastfox.sqlite 128000 8192 - formhistory.sqlite 5120 4096 - permissions.sqlite 10485760 344064 - places.sqlite 2048 2048 - search.sqlite 112640 111616 - signons.sqlite 262144 262144 - stylish.sqlite 34938880 34938880 - urlclassifier3.sqlite 3072 3072 - webappsstore.sqlite 524288 524288 - addons.sqlite 229376 229376 - content-prefs.sqlite 524288 131072 - cookies.sqlite 98304 98304 - downloads.sqlite 458752 458752 - extensions.sqlite 196608 196608 - formhistory.sqlite 65536 65536 - permissions.sqlite 10485760 1179648 - places.sqlite 327680 327680 - signons.sqlite 98304 98304 - webappsstore.sqlite Bytes saved: 20518912

Later this script became a part of a bigger script to backup my $HOME:

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alex@xubuntu:~$ cat bin/backupHome.sh #!/bin/bash   homeDir=$HOME destDir=/media/nas/Alex/backup archName="$(whoami).$(hostname)"   # files or directories to exclude printExcludes() { awk '{printf("--exclude '\''%s'\'' ",$1)}'  ‹‹EOEXCL .encfs .davfs2 .smbcredentials .cache .eagle .dbus .pulse* .thumbnails Downloads EOEXCL }   # vacuum firefox's sqlite files vacuumFirefox() {   pidof firefox && {     echo "ERROR: firefox is still running, close it first!"     return 1   }   which sqlite3 &>/dev/null || {     echo "ERROR: sqlite3 is not installed. Do 'sudo apt-get install sqlite3' first"     return 1   }     local counterBefore=0   local counterAfter=0   local fileSizeBefore fileSizeAfter   local hDir=$homeDir   [ -z "$hDir" ] && hDir=~/     for i in "$hDir"/.mozilla/firefox/*/*.sqlite; do     fileSizeBefore=$(du -b $i|awk '{ print $1 }')     counterBefore=$((counterBefore + fileSizeBefore))     sqlite3 "$i" vacuum     fileSizeAfter=$(du -b $i|awk '{ print $1 }')     counterAfter=$((counterAfter + fileSizeAfter))     echo "$fileSizeBefore $fileSizeAfter - $(basename $i)"   done   echo "Bytes saved: $(( counterBefore - counterAfter ))"   return 0 }   # cleaning phase vacuumFirefox || exit 1 cd "$homeDir" xargs -d \\n -I {} bash -c "rm -rf {}" ‹‹EOLIST .thumbnails/* .cache/* .local/share/Trash/* .adobe/Flash_Player/AssetCache/* .mozilla/firefox/*/Cache/* EOLIST   # creating an archive if [ -d "$destDir" ]; then   exe=$(echo "tar -czf \"${destDir}/${archName}.$(date +%Y-%m-%d).tgz\" $(printExcludes) -C $homeDir ./")   echo "$exe"   eval "$exe" else   echo "ERROR: Directory $destDir doesn't exist. Canno't create an archive"   exit 1 fi

Inside of the printExcludes I'm also excluding files or directories that contain sensitive informations like passwords in open text.

Note: one can also install the BleachBit utility that can perform a similar job