{"id":396,"date":"2026-05-01T01:24:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T01:24:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/nicolascook\/?p=396"},"modified":"2026-05-01T02:26:57","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T02:26:57","slug":"lab-9-task-automation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/nicolascook\/2026\/05\/01\/lab-9-task-automation\/","title":{"rendered":"Lab 9 &#8211; Task Automation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>This lab introduced me to shell scripting for system automation in Linux, with a focus on creating and managing backups. I created a user account and wrote a script that generated a compressed tar archive of the user\u2019s home directory using inputs like my MIDAS name and the current date to name the backup files. I also learned how to move files to system directories like <em>\/var\/backups<\/em>, apply compression, and schedule automated execution using <em>crontab<\/em>. A challenge was correctly handling permissions for system directories and ensuring the script ran properly on a timed schedule. Overall, it improved my understanding of automation, backups, and task scheduling in Linux environments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This lab introduced me to shell scripting for system automation in Linux, with a focus on creating and managing backups. I created a user account and wrote a script that generated a compressed tar archive of the user\u2019s home directory using inputs like my MIDAS name and the current date to name the backup files&#8230;. <\/p>\n<div class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/nicolascook\/2026\/05\/01\/lab-9-task-automation\/\">Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":30558,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wds_primary_category":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/nicolascook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/nicolascook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/nicolascook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/nicolascook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30558"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/nicolascook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/nicolascook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":452,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/nicolascook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396\/revisions\/452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/nicolascook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/nicolascook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/nicolascook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}