[Cialug] Backups with rsync

[Renegade Muskrat]

I think you want to investigate the -H option to rsync.

I have a server at home. All my other machines are backed up to it with 
the incremental/rotating backups that have been discussed here. So 
there are files which have lots of hard links to the same data. When 
the server rsyncs to an offsite server, i use the -H option and the 
hard links aren't a problem. At one time i read that rsync takes longer 
to run if -H is used, but since i schedule the job for when i'm usually 
asleep, i don't really notice.

At 08:28 PM 2/20/2005 -0600, you wrote:
 >I considered the hard link method, but how would that work for
 >mirroring? Maybe I'll do it the simple way and do a full backup once 
a
 >week, then incrementals off that (like diffs).
 >
 >D. Joe Anderson wrote:
 >
 >>On Sun, Feb 20, 2005 at 10:06:39AM -0600, Jonathan Bailey wrote:
 >>
 >>
 >>>Academician Kula wrote:
 >>>
 >>>
 >>>
 >>>>I am curious why you don't want hard links --- I've been using 
rsync
 >>>>with hard links to do backups for a while now and it seems to work
 >>>>well for me. Knowing a bit more about your situation may give us
 >ideas
 >>>>for you to try.
 >>>>
 >>>>
 >>>I want to do incremental backups since they take less disk space in 

 >the
 >>>end (full backups every Sunday for example). I'd then like to rsync 

 >>>those backups to another server. This is what I'm using for
 >incremental
 >>>backups now - it's not perfect, but I'm lookign for better.
 >>>
 >>>rsync -av --exclude-from=/root/rs.exclude
 >>>--compare-dest=/backup/backup-$WEK/ /home/
 >>>/backup/backup-$WEK-$DATESTAMP/ > 
/backup/backup-$WEK-$DATESTAMP.log
 >>>
 >>>
 >>
 >>See, that's the amazing thing about appropriate quoting--it makes it
 >>SO much easier to see that one didn't answer a question asked.
 >>;-)
 >>
 >>For instance, we still haven't any idea what your issue is with
 >>hard links in your backup set.
 >>
 >>As for Dave's point about restoring from incrementals--that
 >>seems like a reasonable concern for incrementals spread across
 >>separate pieces of removable media or whatever.  But one of the
 >>major points of using the hardlinks method from the Mike
 >>Rubel-style[1] rsync backups is that each backup appears to be a
 >>*full* backup so far as the filesystem cares.
 >>
 >>Granted, you don't have the redundancy that having real multiple
 >>full backups would give you, but you do get the incrementality
 >>(is that even a word?) and you don't end up taking the amount of
 >>storage or time that multiple full backups would take.
                                                -- Dan
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