Backing Up Your Linux

Rob Williams

Rob Williams

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Backing up your computer is important. Don't be the sucker who loses important files and has to deal with it afterwards! In this how-to, you will learn about using rsync and lftp, writing your own scripts and adding them to crontab and of course, backing up to your external storage, NAS and also a remote server running Linux.

You can read the full article here and discuss it here.
 
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Grsync

There is something called Grsync which is a GTK+ UI on top of rsync.
The only issue I have in understanding how the updates happen or what output comes when one does that. How does it know the changes happen, does it make an index or does checksum of each file or what? Please lemme know. Thanx.
 
Rob Williams

Rob Williams

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I've never heard of Grsync, I will need to check it out sometime. As for how rsync works, I believe it first compares timestamps for each file and then digs deep into the file to figure out which is newer. The algorithm can be found here:

http://rsync.samba.org/tech_report/node2.html

Whenever you run rsync on a file, it creates an index, but I'm unsure where it's located, or how it's even stored. It is what keeps track of the files that are currently there though, and then add to it if you add more files to a specific folder or what have you. I wish their site explained the entire process a bit better, to be honest.
 
F

Francois Scheurer

Guest
hard links with rsync

Hello

Here is a shell script that I wrote to make snapshot backups of your filesystem with the speed of rsync.
It creates hard-links between the backups in order to have a full backup taking as little disk space as if it would be an incremental backup.
It also come with tuning parameters like MD5 integrity signature, 'chattr' protection, etc. .

check it here: http://blog.pointsoftware.ch/?p=527&preview=true
It's free! ^^

Cheers
Francois Scheurer
 
Rob Williams

Rob Williams

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Cheers for putting so much effort into that script! It's quite similar to an Acronis for Linux, but free!
 
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Francois Scheurer

Guest
Rob Williams said:
Cheers for putting so much effort into that script! It's quite similar to an Acronis for Linux, but free!
Click to expand...

Thank you William!! ^^

Special thanks go to Andrew Tridgell (rsync) and Mike Rubel (hard linked rotated snapshots) ;)

I think the irony of rsync is that it is SOOOO powerful, that many people are afraid of reading its man-pages. thanks to you and other blogs those people have a chance to realize that they should definitely not miss this masterpiece of rsync!

I will also post on this blog another script soon, that copy the backups of rsync to encrypted tapes.
 
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