[SOLVED] Synchronizing directories

kokoras63 · 10-20-2012, 03:44 PM

Hi to all,

I am new to Linux and I have a question:
I have some folders in linux (UBUNTU 12.04) and I want to always be in sync with under the same name folders in my external USB disk (something like a "local Dropbox". Since it holds a lot of data, that does not change all of it at the same time, I need a type of incremental solution.
Any ideas?

Thank you in advance for your time.

schneidz · 10-20-2012, 03:55 PM

i think this is what rsync is for. else, you can probably script something using find and cp.

seeberg · 10-20-2012, 05:32 PM

And if you would like a GUI to help you out have a look at backupninja

David the H. · 10-21-2012, 04:44 AM

I've always been partial to unison.

http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/

kokoras63 · 10-25-2012, 03:31 AM

Thank you guys.
It seem that Unison is more close to what I want.
One question though. Does it create readable backups (ie copies) or some other format (compressed etc)
so they need to be restored to be read? For example after syncronization in Linux to an external USB hard disk, can I take afterwards the hard disk to a windows system and read the files from the regular windows file manager?

Thanx a lot.

David the H. · 10-25-2012, 12:32 PM

All unison does by default is ensure that the two directories have identical contents. Changes made in either directory are propagated to the other, and conflicts can be handled in a couple of different ways. There's also a system for backing up replaced files to a third location, I believe, but I haven't done anything with it personally.

It has an extensive documentation page, and I recommend taking the time to read it thoroughly.

kokoras63 · 10-28-2012, 08:57 AM

Thank you very much David for your clarifications

All the best,
kokoras63