anyone use rsync?

enine · 03-27-2006, 08:02 AM

I built a small server to backup my laptop and my wife's laptop. I'm running Slackware 10.2 on both and her laptop runs XP so I setup samba to share windows like so she could access the backups. I smb mount /home/enine from the remote server then use rsync to copy the data from /home/enine on my laptop over.
Odd problem i'm having is when using the --delete option any files I delete on my laptop under subdirectories under /home/enine gets deleted on the server but nothing in /home/enine gets deleted. I typically copy everything to /home/enine be it downloads, or files copied from a digicam or scans, then sort/rename/convert/whatever and then move them to where they need to be so if I do a backup in between I end up with a lot of old files sitting on my /home/enine on my server. Anyone know why it wouldn't delete in the top level folder but works fine under.
Also do you have any suggestions on how to rsync but not delete files for a certain length of time to sort of give a buffer if I delete/rename/change something I didn't want to.

Guttorm · 03-27-2006, 08:43 AM

Hi

I just suggest you take a look at rdiff-backup. It's a program that most distros have, probably Slackware too.

It uses rsync to do the backups, but has no problem with delete, and also has a rollback feature so you can set it up so it will store diff files in a special directory called rdiff-backup-data and those diffs can be used to recreate the filesystem after you have "rsynced" a a backup with --delete.

I think the program is really neat, much better backups than a regular rsync one.

Best regards,
Guttorm.

essdeeay · 03-27-2006, 09:33 AM

You would need to post your command & config file.

However, consider using cwrsync (free rsync for Windows), which will allow you to use rsync's checksumming feature to only transfer those parts of a file that have changed. Rsync'ing a mounted drive is an ugly solution.

http://itefix.no/cwrsync

Steve

haertig · 03-27-2006, 10:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by enine

Also do you have any suggestions on how to rsync but not delete files for a certain length of time to sort of give a buffer if I delete/rename/change something I didn't want to.

I do something like the below example. My rotation scheme is backup-count-based, not time-based, but you could modify that if you desire. I actually have a long-winded PERL script that does this, so I extracted just the minimum code to illustrate what I do. Since I manually extracted code from PERL and retyped it into a functionally similar shell example (hopefully!), I have not specifically tested the example below. It's for illustration purposes only. You have been warned!

Code:

$ su
# source=/home/whatever
# destination=/mnt/backup
# mount -o remount,rw $destination
# rm -rf $destination/snapshot.3 2>/dev/null
# mv $destination/snapshot.2 $destination/snapshot.3 2>/dev/null
# mv $destination/snapshot.1 $destination/snapshot.2 2>/dev/null
# mv $destination/snapshot.0 $destination/snapshot.1 2>/dev/null
# rsync --one-file-system \
        --archive \
        --safe-links \
        --delete \
        --delete-after \
        --delete-excluded \
        --link-dest="$destination/snapshot.1" \
        --filter="merge /usr/local/etc/rsync.d/rsync-filter" \
        --filter="dir-merge /.rsync-filter" \
          "$source/" \
          "$destination/snapshot.0/"
# touch $destination/snapshot.0
# mount -o remount,ro $destination
# exit
$

enine · 03-27-2006, 11:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by essdeeay

You would need to post your command & config file.

However, consider using cwrsync (free rsync for Windows), which will allow you to use rsync's checksumming feature to only transfer those parts of a file that have changed. Rsync'ing a mounted drive is an ugly solution.

http://itefix.no/cwrsync

Steve

If its rsync for windows then wouldn't I need windows at the server side?

essdeeay · 03-27-2006, 01:11 PM

No, cwrsync for Windows uses some cygwin dlls, the only thing you have to be careful of is in the config file, the way you express / or \

enine · 03-27-2006, 01:57 PM

yea, it looks like the trailing / tells it to delete in the parent folder. Obscure option I didn't see.
I'm backing up to a linux server not windows, I'm just running samba to my wife's Xp box can access my files if needed (read only so no windows virus can wreck anything)