Backup

[David Fletcher]

On Thu, 2016-11-03 at 15:28 +0200, Errol Sapir wrote:
> 
> 
> On 11/03/2016 10:29 AM, David Fletcher wrote:
> > PS
> > 
> > I never, ever use graphical tools to copy/move large numbers of
> > files.
> > They just don't seem to be reliable for this and even Linux desktop
> > graphical tools fall over in my experience. OTOH terminal type
> > tools
> > such as rsync always work.
> > 
>  If one knows the various definitions to use in rsync I'm sure it is
> the one of the better solutions. I am too new to rsync to risk it on
> something that is so vital as all my data unless I can be hand-
> held.:-[
> Errol

Basically, all you need is rsync -av. It can work just within your
local computer or across your network. For example, this is the command
that it is embedded in a script that automatically grabs a copy of what
is on my server:-
rsync -av --delete --bwlimit=20000 root at server:/home/
/home/dave/backups/server/copyofslashhome/

but all you need for your purposes as a beginner is probably something
like
sudo rsync -av --delete /home/ /media/YourBackupDevice/

using sudo so that you can access home directories other than your own.
I think that should work. To get the networked example to work I use a
trick with something called ssh keys. As a beginner don't worry about
that for now, just be aware that there is something you can use to get
access to the content of other computers.

If you're worried, set up a test directory to play with, and experiment
with leaving out --delete and keeping it in, but rsync will not alter
the source directory.

Dave