GitHub Backup Script

A shell script for Linux that automatically backs up your GitHub repositories to your external hard drive.

What does it do?

This script backs up all OWNED repositories, including private ones.

If you also want to back up repositories that are part of an organization, follow these steps:

1. Modify the API query: Either:
   • Remove &affiliation=owner from the curl request, or
   • Update the request URL to:

     'https://api.github.com/user/repos?per_page=100&page=${page}&visibility=all&affiliation=owner,collaborator,organization_member'

     This change ensures that the script backs up repositories where you are an owner, collaborator, or organization member (the default affiliation).

For more details about the GitHub API endpoint, visit: GitHub Repositories API Documentation

Setup

1. Copy the .env.example file to .env:

   cp .env.example .env
   

2. Set the values in the .env file:

   • GITHUB_USERNAME: Your GitHub username (e.g., TomTruyen)
   • GITHUB_TOKEN: Your GitHub access token (e.g., abcdefghij123456798) - Generate it at GitHub Token Settings
   • OUTPUT_PATH: The location where you want your backups to be saved (e.g., ~/Desktop/Backups)

3. Ensure you have your SSH key and Git Config stored in the github-backup-script directory:

   • id_ed25519 and id_ed25519.pub should be present in the directory of the Dockerfile directory.
     • If you use a different SSH key, modify the Dockerfile to copy the correct key files.
   • .gitconfig should be present in the directory of the Dockerfile

Run

To start the script using Docker, run:

docker-compose up -d --build

Errors

Bad Interpreter

bash: ./github_backup_script.sh: /usr/bin/bash^M: bad interpreter: No such file or directory

Solution

1. Install dos2unix

sudo apt install dos2unix

2. Convert the script

dos2unix -k -o github_backup_script.sh

3. Try to run it again