I have a desktop under kubuntu 9.04 but I work mostly on a notebook under ubuntu 9.10 which is connected to the desktop via wi-fi

I want to have on the desktop a mirror of my notebook's working directory, so that every week (or day, or whatever) they synchronize automatically

What's the best way to do this?

rsync is your friend. I don't remember whether rsync is installed by default. I tend to use rsync over ssh (safer, very easy), for that you need the openssh daemon running - let's say on your desktop.

On your desktop, then:

On your notebook:

Because the ssh server is now running on your desktop, you'll need to run rsync commands from your laptop. From very safe (never overwrite anything newer) up to very exact (make sure the two trees are 100% the same):

1. Never overwrite anything on the desktop that looks more recent; never delete in general

This synchronizes /on/notebook/documentdir with all its subfolders to /on/desktop/documentdir. If nothing was there before it comes down to a copy. Be careful with directory names in rsync: best to always have source dir without a / appended, and destination parent dir with a / appended. If usernames on notebook and desktop are the same you can leave the desktopuser@ part out. Use either the IP address of the desktop, or if you have working dns, the name.

2. Sync everything from notebook to desktop including files that look newer on the desktop, but don't delete stuff

3. Sync the tree completely, make the desktop dir a clone of the notebook one. Delete files on the desktop that don't exist on the notebook.

4. Paranoid mode: Be even more exact and don't trust file modification times and sizes; read and compare all blocks on both sides and make absolutely sure the clone doesn't have any imperfections. This can be a lot slower. Also potentially delete stuff, like in (3).

If you want to do this every day/week whatever, you would have to make it a crontab entry, with the slight complication of needing a trusted key without password (private key on notebook in ~/.ssh, public key on desktop in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys).

Hope this helps - Bert.

thank you!

Can I have on my desktop sth like svn-repository for my notebook working directory? So I could look what I had in the directory a month ago

Not really, with rsync - you'd need a versioning control system for that. Systems that are good at keeping track of changes, and systems that are good at syncing trees with potentially big files in them, are different beasts usually, although I'm not especially up to date with this.

What you can do is make weekly or monthly snapshots (copies, really, such as 'cp -a tree tree-20091101' ) of the tree on the desktop, if you have the space.

There are also tools around that use hardlinks to do this with less space. You'd have to google around for that, I haven't used those myself.

You could have a look at http://blog.interlinked.org/tutorial...e_machine.html

Great!

How can I exclude from backup all subdirs named .svn?

If you use rsync

thx!