Simple shell script to backup selected directories

A couple of months ago, I published a short script to backup MySQL databases. Today I created a simple shell script to backup selected directories.

#!/bin/sh

# Parent backup directory
backup_parent_dir="/var/backup_server/$(hostname -s)"

# Directories to backup
backup_me="/etc /var/www /var/named /var/log"

# Check and create backup directory
backup_date=`date +%Y_%m_%d_%H_%M`
backup_dir=${backup_parent_dir}/fs_${backup_date}
mkdir -p $backup_dir

# Perform backup
for directory in $backup_me
do
  archive_name=`echo ${directory} | sed s/^\\\/// | sed s/\\\//_/g`
  tar pcfzP ${backup_dir}/${archive_name}.tgz ${directory} 2>&1 | tee ${backup_dir}/${archive_name}.log
done