[GRLUG] concurrently running scripts

[Eric Beversluis]

I presently have a script that backs up Zarafa mail stuff to a local
directory, then does an rsync of it to a USB-mounted ioSafe, then does a
mysqldump locally and then an rsync of the mysqldump to the external
ioSafe.

The whole process is closing in on taking more than the hour it has
before the process starts over. We earlier explored using flock to keep
one instance from starting before the earlier one finished. But I'm
thinking it might be better just to separate out the mysqldump into a
separate script that would run (once a day) concurrently with the other
backups (that are running each hour).

My question is whether that would create any problems as the two scripts
try to write to the same HDD and then to the same USB drive. I'm
assuming that the OS could handle that, but I want to be sure.

Thanks.