BRCS.sh - Linux System Maintenance CLI

A command-line tool to back up and restore Linux system configurations, clean up unnecessary files, and schedule automatic maintenance at system startup. Works on any major Linux distribution.

BRCS is an acronym for Backup, Restoration, Cleaner and Schedule.

Features

Backup

• Configuration files under /etc/ (.conf, .ini, .rules)
• User dotfiles (.bashrc, .zshrc, .vimrc, .gitconfig, .tmux.conf, etc.)
• Crontabs and /etc/cron.d
• Systemd custom units (.service, .timer, .mount, .socket)
• SSH configs (config, authorized_keys, sshd_config)
• Firewall rules (iptables, nftables, ufw, firewalld)
• Network configs (NetworkManager, netplan, systemd-networkd)
• System files (/etc/fstab, /etc/hosts, /etc/hostname, /etc/resolv.conf, etc.)
• Package repo configs (detected per distro)
• Shell scripts in $HOME

Restore

• Interactive mode: review diffs and choose per file
• Bulk mode: restore everything at once
• Validates zip integrity before restoring
• Creates a safety backup of existing files before overwriting
• List backup contents without restoring (--list)

Cleanup

• Update and upgrade system packages
• Clean package manager cache
• Remove orphaned/unused packages
• Clean systemd journal logs (vacuum to 7d / 100MB)
• Remove old kernels (apt, dnf)
• Clean disabled Snap revisions
• Remove unused Flatpak runtimes
• Prune Docker resources
• Clear Steam shader/compat cache
• Clean /tmp and /var/tmp (skips files in use)
• Reports disk space freed at the end
• Dry-run mode to preview without making changes

General

• Full CLI interface for scripting and automation
• Interactive terminal menu for manual use
• Timestamped color-coded logging (INFO, WARN, ERROR)
• Terminal progress bar for all operations
• Signal trapping for safe temp file cleanup
• Root/sudo check before privileged operations

Supported Distributions

Package Manager	Distributions
apt	Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Zorin OS, Pop!_OS
dnf	Fedora, RHEL 9+, CentOS Stream
yum	CentOS 7, RHEL 7/8
pacman	Arch Linux, Manjaro, EndeavourOS
zypper	openSUSE Tumbleweed/Leap, SLES
apk	Alpine Linux

Requirements

• bash (version 3.2+)
• zip and unzip

Optional tools (used automatically if available):

• locate or mlocate/plocate (faster file search; falls back to find)
• deborphan, localepurge (Debian-based cleanup)
• paccache (Arch cache cleanup)
• flatpak, snap, docker (cleaned if present)
• lsof or fuser (safe temp file cleanup)
• diff (interactive restore diffs)

Install on Debian/Ubuntu

sudo apt install zip unzip mlocate

Install on Fedora

sudo dnf install zip unzip mlocate

Install on Arch

sudo pacman -S zip unzip mlocate

Usage

Interactive menu

chmod +x BRCS.sh
./BRCS.sh

=== BRCS v2.0.0 - System Maintenance ===
1) Backup configurations
2) Restore configurations
3) Full system cleanup
4) Full system cleanup (dry-run)
5) List backup contents
6) Schedule cleanup at boot
7) Exit

CLI (non-interactive)

# Backup all configurations
./BRCS.sh --backup

# Restore all from a backup file
./BRCS.sh --restore backup.zip

# Restore interactively (review each file)
./BRCS.sh --restore-interactive backup.zip

# List contents of a backup
./BRCS.sh --list backup.zip

# Run full system cleanup
./BRCS.sh --cleanup

# Preview cleanup without making changes
./BRCS.sh --dry-run --cleanup

# Schedule cleanup at boot
./BRCS.sh --schedule

# Show help
./BRCS.sh --help

Backups

Backup files are saved as: hostname.confs.YYYYMMDD.zip

Logs are saved to: ~/backup_YYYYMMDD.log

License

This project is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v3.0.

Contributing

To run the test suite you need the Bats framework. Install it via your package manager (e.g. sudo apt install bats) and then execute:

bats test