system("rm $ERRORFILE") if -e $ERRORFILE;
[download]

Also, you really want to use File::Find for traversing through directories.

Cheers,
Ovid

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Another good reason to use unlink() is to avoid the chance that somebody will subvert your script by slipping an executable named rm into your path.

You could, of course, mitagate this by writing

system("/bin/rm", $ERRORFILE) if -e $ERRORFILE;

Notice also that I reworked your use of system() to pass two arguments rather than one. This avoids the often unavoidable, albeit small, overhead of having system() check for shell metacharacters.

Better, I think, to write

unlink($ERRORFILE) or die "$ERRORFILE: $!"
    if -e $ERRORFILE;

Why not unlink?

Why not File::Find?

Why no -w?

Why don't you check to see if the dir is already mounted before mounting?

Why don't you use Archive::Tar/Compress::Zlib/etc.. for compressing.

And, personally, when I have something on a cron and use any type of config file, I like to make sure that noone is editing it when the script starts to run. I usually use a shell script which is called by cron that is something like:

#!/bin/sh

r=`ps -eaf | grep <name of script> | grep -v grep | grep -v vi`
if [ $? -eq 1 ]
    then
        /run/the/script
    else
        sleep 10
        /re/run/this/script
fi
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This way, if the script is running, it is being edited, or if the conf file is being used (assumming foo.pl has foo.conf, and you have <name of script> as 'foo') it will wait. YMMV.

But, much better than your original. It is always exciting to see yourself (and others) progress. Good show!

Cheers,
KM

foreach my $file (@$exc) { 
    if($_ eq $file) {
        $skip =1;
    }
}
[download]

is broken, since it'll keep looping through checking for exclusions even if it's already found that this file or directory is in fact excluded from being backed up. Realistically, in a small, simple backup script like this, run on your own computer most of the time, it probably wouldn't matter. But it IS generally a good idea to leave a loop when you no longer need it to execute. :)

foreach my $file (@$exc) {
    if($_ eq $file) {
        $skip =1;
    }
    last if $skip;
}
[download]

Don't test an exit flag, just set the flag and exit.

foreach my $file (@$exc) {
  $skip=1, last if ($_ eq $file);
}
[download]

--
$you = new YOU;
honk() if $you->love(perl)

Ah, but the only reason for the flag is to immediately skip to the next iteration of the while loop, which can be done without a flag at all:

  FILE:
    while (defined(local $_ = readdir(LS))) {
        foreach my $file (@$exc) {
            next FILE if ($_ eq $file);
        }
        my $file = $dir . $_;
        my $append = "tar -rf $tarfile $file 2>> $ERRORFILE";
        system($append);
        print "\t$file\n";
    }
[download]

Although I would use a hash for the excludes, instead of looping over an array for each file in the directory, especially since the most common case of a file not being in the exclude list would also be the slowest case.

I also recommend testing the readdir() assignment with defined, as I did above, so that the while loop will not stop prematurely if there's a file named '0'.

Thank you!!!