Automatic Updates

Here is my pipeline to share the public facing part of my [[Second Brain]] and keep the private or internal ruminations to myself.

The idea here is to seperate public facing notes from my private notes and share them publicly for easy access and collaboration using these tools:

rsync
git
crontab

These are the specific steps currently documented that create the automatic backup pipeline:

Write notes using VS Code, using Foam extensions.
The markdown files are saved in a local private github repo
rsync files designated as public to local public github repo
git local public repo to remote public repo
Wrap these up in a bash script and put in crontab to run as scheduled

rsync

I use this to sync public facing stuff to another local git repo to sync with a public source.

sync -av --exclude='.foam/' --exclude='.git/' --exclude='.vscode/' --exclude='scripts/' --exclude='Companies/' --exclude='private/' --exclude='Meetings/' --exclude='rsync.log' --exclude='cron.log' --exclude='_layouts/' --exclude='Journals/' --include='AI/' --include='Ansible/' --include='attachments/' --include='Demos/' --include='HAM AI/' --include='Journeys/' -- include='Ideas/' --include='Fabric/' --include='Ideas.md' --include='Inbox.md' --include='Projects.md' --include='readme.md' --include='Todo.md' --include='Tools.md' --exclude='*' {{working_dir}}/foamy-stuff/ {{working_dir}}/brain-dump/ >> {{working_dir}}/foamy-stuff/rsync.log 2>&1

git

Created simple bash script called automate_git.sh that contains just a few git commands to commit and sync the local repository to the remote public facing repo.

#!/bin/bash

if ! hash rsync; then
    echo "Rsync is not installed on this system"
    exit 1
fi

rsync -av --include='.foam/' --exclude='.vscode/' --exclude='private/' --exclude='Meetings/' --exclude='rsync.log' --exclude='cron.log' --exclude='_layouts/' --exclude='Journals/' --include='AI/' --include='Ansible/' --include='attachments/' --include='Demos/' --include='HAM AI/' --include='Journeys/' --include='Ideas.md' --include='Inbox.md' --include='Projects.md' --include='readme.md' --include='Todo.md' --include='Tools.md' --exclude='*' {{working_dir}}foamy-stuff/ {{working_dir}}/brain-dump/

cd {{working_dir}}/brain-dump/

if ! hash git; then
    echo "Git is not installed on this system"
    exit 1
fi

diff=$(git diff)
if [ -z "$diff" ]; then
    echo "There are no changes to commit"
    exit 0
fi

status=$(git status)
if [ -n "$status" ]; then
    echo "There are changes to commit"
    git add .
    git commit -m "Automated commit: $(date)"
    git push
fi

Make script executable.

chmod +x automate_git.sh

crontab

Setup a local crontab to run when my laptop is most likely to be on

30 13 * * *  {{working_dir}}/brain-dump/automate_git.sh >> {{working_dir}}/foamy-stuff/cron.log 2>&1

[!NOTE] In the above and below examples, you will need to update the {{working_dir}} with the path to your executable and Foam/Obsidian markdown files or vault.

Note Created: 2025-01-06

Backlinks

Todo

4. Configured [[Automatic Updates]]

Foam

Created a process to sync my **Private** and **Public** notes called [[Automatic Updates]]