backing up data via ssh
 

Hi,

I have two computers on a network, say 192.168.1.10 and 192.168.1.20. Using Fedora's "connect to Server via SSH" I mounted my home fold on the .20 server on the .10 one. I was wondering if it's possible to automate the copying of my htdocs folder from .10 to a local backup folder, and from there to the .20 machine. I couldn't get samba or nfs to work ... and the SSH volume mounts and I can drag stuff over. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hi

When you have ssh access, you can use scp to copy from computer to computer. It works like the cp command, but prefix with "username@computer:" on the arguments.

E.g.
On source computer:
scp -r /var/www/htdocs username@192.168.1.20:~/backups/
Or on destination:
scp -r username@192.168.1.10:/var/www/htdocs .

It will ask for a password, to prevent that, you need to set up key based authenticaton on ssh so you can log in without a password.

Maybe look at
http://ssh.com/support/documentation...ication-2.html
(I googled "ssh public key")

When you have your command working, you can put it in cron.

Look into the scp command. For instance:

scp some_source_file username@machine:/path_to_destination

or for a directory:

scp -r some_file username@machine:/path_to_destination

This will also work from the other direction

scp username@machine:/path_to_source_file /destination_path

and if you setup a public key with ssh you won't have to enter a password.

Ah...you beat me...heh

You might want to check out using rsync as well. It works over SSH quite nicely and may have some advantages over scp depending on what you want to do.

An example of rsync with ssh
 

rsync -av some_files -e ssh user@host:/path_to_dist

-a will archive directory including subdirectories
-v verbose optional
-e will use ssh for secure transfers

Rsync will keep logs of file changes. When you
run this command in the future, only new or updated files
will be transferred.

might as well as stick in the -z (compression) and --delete (sync up folders) options