Using rsync [LWN.net]

Using rsync

Posted Nov 29, 2007 14:28 UTC (Thu) by heini (subscriber, #33614)
Parent article: How The Backup Process Has Changed

> Using rsync the way you've described is fine for mirroring your
> system's current state.  But it only gives you one state of the
> filesystem.  How do you recover a file that you deleted/modified but
> only noticed after a few backup cycles?
>
> If that is a requirement, then plain rsync probably isn't enough.

Yes, it is. However, there are several backup solutions which use rsync 
under the hood, one of them being rsnapshot (http://www.rsnapshot.org/).

The big advantage of using rsync is that restore is very easy (cp, scp or 
even rsync). Oh, and in case it matters, rsync can backup ACLs, which - 
to my knowledge - tar still can't handle.

Bye...

     Dirk

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Using rsync

Posted Dec 2, 2007 17:40 UTC (Sun) by bchapman26 (subscriber, #4565) [Link]

I second rsnapshot. This simple script revolutionized backing up my systems. bye bye tapes,
bye bye rotating tapes, no more lengty restores, and with cron it is automated with meaningfull
summaries emailed daily. Something propriatory solutions can't seem to get right.