[ubuntu-uk] Using Rsync to make incremental backups[Scanned]

[Paul Brunt]

You may also want to look into using simple old tar, which can perform 
incremental backups, see:
http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_node/Incremental-Dumps.html

Paul Tansom wrote:
> ** Rob Beard <rob at esdelle.co.uk> [2007-11-23 21:04]:
>   
>> I'm hoping someone could help me with something I'm trying to achieve 
>> with regards to backing up a friend's server to an external hard drive.
>>
>> Basically what he wants is to be able to run a nightly backup from his 
>> server to a USB FAT32 formatted external hard drive.
>>
>> However, what he wants is only any files that have changed to be copied 
>> over, and these files to be copied over into a new directory on the drive.
>>
>> I've been looking into rsync to do this.  I've managed to do an initial 
>> copy of his files from his server to the drive and then I've tried to 
>> add some files to the server and then run rsync using the --backup-dir 
>> switch which I've been pointing to the existing data on the USB drive.
>>
>> I can't seem to get it to copy only the differences though.
>>
>> I was wondering if anyone knew how to achieve this, or is it not 
>> possible with a FAT32 formatted drive (which doesn't support hard links 
>> as far as I know)?
>>
>> To be honest I think it would be much easier to just copy the full 
>> directory every night.
>>     
> ** end quote [Rob Beard]
>
> I thought that was exactly what rsync did, just copy the changed files.
> When I use it I get a report on the 'speedup' as a result of only
> copying the changed file once it has finished. This is from an rsync to
> upload web content to my web server over ssh using:
>
> rsync -av /path/to/local/dir remote.server.com:/path/to/remote/dir
>
> If it is for backup and you want to keep a record of changed files, i.e.
> keep copies of the files as they were before the change as a historical
> backup as well you may like to take a look at rdiff-backup:
>
> http://www.nongnu.org/rdiff-backup/
>
>