Problem with Udev Rule for making backups

[emil_pavlov]

I have created a udev to make backups on my external hdd, whenever it is inserted.

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ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTRS{serial}=="5743415A4131323437343733", RUN+="/home/emil/.exhddbakcup.sh"

The backup script is quite simple:

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#!/bin/bash
{
touch /home/emil/thisworks.txt
su emil alt-notify-send "Backup message" "USB Backup device detected"
sleep 150
R=$(cat /home/emil/.backupperform)
if [ "$R" = "1" ]; then
   su emil alt-notify-send "Backup Message" "It has been a while since the last backup, beginning backup."
   nice -n 17 ionice -c2 -n6 /usr/bin/backintime  --backup-job >/dev/null 2>&1
   echo '0' > /home/emil/.backupperfom
   su emil alt-notify-send "Backup Message" "Your backup has completed"
fi
} &


alt-notify-send is a script which i found on the internet, and it basically allows to send message to other users through notify, here is the code:

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#!/bin/sh
user=`whoami`
pids=`pgrep -u $user gnome-panel`
title=$1
text=$2
timeout=$3
 
if [ -z "$title" ]; then
        echo You need to give me a title >&2
        exit 1
fi
if [ -z "$text" ]; then
        text=$title
fi
if [ -z "$timeout" ]; then
        timeout=60000
fi
 
for pid in $pids; do
        # find DBUS session bus for this session
        DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=`grep -z DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS \
                /proc/$pid/environ | sed -e 's/DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=//'`
        # use it
        DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS \
        notify-send "$title" "$text"
done

After a few hours of debugging I couldn´t get this to work. If I execute the script from terminal everything is fine. When I look at udevadm it show that the script has been execute, but I neither see any message nor the file thisworks.txt is created.

Do you have some ideas?

[Pilosopong Tasyo]

Replace:

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su emil alt-notify-send "..." "..."

With:

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su emil DISPLAY=:0 alt-notify-send "..." "..."

See if that will work.

[emil_pavlov]

No still nothing; and the file 'thisworks.txt' is not created, which means that the problem lays somewhere else.

[Pilosopong Tasyo]

Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with using udev rules. But if I were to implement this, I'll just write a script to monitor the /media folder for the presence of the designated removable media, and execute the backup script once the media is attached to the computer. Then use cron to schedule the monitoring script to run at regular intervals. Is this approach more practical?

[emil_pavlov]

Yes, I guess it is. Thank you anyway.