Anyone know anything about rsync --link-dest option usage?
I'm aiming to use rsync's --link-dest option to do some incremental backups but I'm not absolutely sure I've got its use correct. What I'm going to do is maintain incremental backups for the last seven days, so they'll be in directories named for the days of the week. The script will work out values for today and yesterday and then do (example for today):- rm -fr /backup/Wed rsync -a --link-dest=/backup/Tue fromSource /backup/Wed Will this do what's intended? I'm less interested in detailed syntax errors but want to be sure I will get 7 days of incremental backups. -- Chris Green
On 30 March 2011 19:22, Chris G <cl@isbd.net> wrote:
I'm aiming to use rsync's --link-dest option to do some incremental backups but I'm not absolutely sure I've got its use correct.
What I'm going to do is maintain incremental backups for the last seven days, so they'll be in directories named for the days of the week. The script will work out values for today and yesterday and then do (example for today):-
rm -fr /backup/Wed rsync -a --link-dest=/backup/Tue fromSource /backup/Wed
Will this do what's intended? I'm less interested in detailed syntax errors but want to be sure I will get 7 days of incremental backups.
Have a look at dirvish: http://www.dirvish.org/ Jenny
On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 07:48:36PM +0100, Jenny Hopkins wrote:
On 30 March 2011 19:22, Chris G <cl@isbd.net> wrote:
I'm aiming to use rsync's --link-dest option to do some incremental backups but I'm not absolutely sure I've got its use correct.
What I'm going to do is maintain incremental backups for the last seven days, so they'll be in directories named for the days of the week. The script will work out values for today and yesterday and then do (example for today):-
rm -fr /backup/Wed rsync -a --link-dest=/backup/Tue fromSource /backup/Wed
Will this do what's intended? I'm less interested in detailed syntax errors but want to be sure I will get 7 days of incremental backups.
Have a look at dirvish: http://www.dirvish.org/
It's a bit inactive isn't it, nothing much has happened since 2005. I have looked at some others like ccollect, duplicity and rsnapshot but they all seem to be unnecessarily complex for very little (if any) gain over using rsync directly. -- Chris Green
On 30/03/11 19:22, Chris G wrote:
I'm aiming to use rsync's --link-dest option to do some incremental backups but I'm not absolutely sure I've got its use correct.
What I'm going to do is maintain incremental backups for the last seven days, so they'll be in directories named for the days of the week. The script will work out values for today and yesterday and then do (example for today):-
rm -fr /backup/Wed rsync -a --link-dest=/backup/Tue fromSource /backup/Wed
Will this do what's intended? I'm less interested in detailed syntax errors but want to be sure I will get 7 days of incremental backups.
I think you will find it faster to not do the rm -rf and use --del as one of the rsync params. Then it will only remove what it needs to remove. (I am not an expert). -- nev
On Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 12:25:20AM +0100, nev young wrote:
On 30/03/11 19:22, Chris G wrote:
I'm aiming to use rsync's --link-dest option to do some incremental backups but I'm not absolutely sure I've got its use correct.
What I'm going to do is maintain incremental backups for the last seven days, so they'll be in directories named for the days of the week. The script will work out values for today and yesterday and then do (example for today):-
rm -fr /backup/Wed rsync -a --link-dest=/backup/Tue fromSource /backup/Wed
Will this do what's intended? I'm less interested in detailed syntax errors but want to be sure I will get 7 days of incremental backups.
I think you will find it faster to not do the rm -rf and use --del as one of the rsync params. Then it will only remove what it needs to remove.
I don't think that does the same thing, what --link-dest does is to check whether the file you're copying is there already (in the directory specified by the --link-dest) and if it is there already a hard link is put into the destination directory. Unless you start with a completely empty destination you can't be sure that all the files which can be hard links are created as hard links. Using the rsync --delete option (which I may want to do as well) just means to delete files from the destination which have been deleted from the source. -- Chris Green
participants (3)
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Chris G -
Jenny Hopkins -
nev young