On Thu, Jan 07, 2010 at 11:33:04AM +0000, James Taylor wrote:
On 7 Jan 2010, at 11:25, Chris G wrote:
On Tue, Jan 05, 2010 at 08:39:58PM +0000, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
Chris G wrote:
I'm after backup rather than synchronisation so Unison doesn't really offer what I want. What I'm actually doing is to rsync files to the backup system
Sorry - don't mean to be thick here, but surely your first step is to ensure that your main machine and the backup machine are synchronised, which is (AFAIK) what both Unison and rsync do. If you're not synchronising the two machines, then surely you'd be using copy (cp) not rsync?
I'm not synchronising, no changes on the backup machine will ever get back to the client machine.
Perhaps this is just a language/communication issue.
rsync can be used to synchronise one folder TO the other i.e. make the target folder the same as the current, in an efficient manner (very much like patch)
... but that's simply copy isn't it? :-) OK, rsync does it more efficently than cp does but the result is identical.
Synchronising is, to my mind, bi-directional. It's the sort of thing you do with your PDA/phone when you 'synchronise' it with your desktop calendar. New changes on the desktop ar copied to the PDA, new changes on the PDA are copied to the desktop.
Similarly you might want to synchronise your home desktop (or part of it) with your work desktop, changes are copied *both* ways.
Unison most definitely does synchronise in the sense I mean. Rsync *can* do this but it's not really its primary use I don't think.