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I need to take incremental backup of users files which is located in the following location automatically using a cron job. Could anyone explain the procedure to take backup using rsync in detail pls?

Location: /home/user1/Desktop/

Note: The backup should be saved as follows, if the system IP is 172.29.36.10 the backupfile should be named as user10 and so on. How to acheive this ?

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1 Answer

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Open a terminal and type: man rsync

But seriously, if you're just wanting to do a backup that copies what you currently have in ~/Desktop to that location and not store any backlog or anything like that you could use:

rsync -azve ssh --delete /home/user1/Desktop 172.29.36.10:/Desktop/backup/folder

You'll have to install openssh-server on the receiving side though. Or you could create a script in /etc/init.d to start rsync --deamon on the remote machine at boot and remove the e ssh part

Here's a breakdown of the options: -a archive mode (recurse directories and keep permissions, etc), -v verbose mode, -e ssh use the SSH protocol for the transfer, --delete delete extraneous files on the receiving side.

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That's assuming he has an rsync daemon running on the other machine. (-a is the same as -rt [more specifically -rlptgoD]). He could use -u, but I think it's unnecessary unless it's a folder used by somebody else as well. – Githlar Feb 18 '12 at 14:17
Greetings: rsync --progress --hurtz /directory/to/backup validUser@172.29.36.10:/destination/for/backup/ Keep in mind that you wont be able to rsync without being prompted for a password, so to rsync without having to type a password you can read this tut: linuxproblem.org/art_9.html – kingmilo Feb 18 '12 at 14:24
the rsync utility is installed in Ubuntu by default. – kingmilo Feb 18 '12 at 14:30
I completely forgot about the fact that he's doing it through a cron job... that might be an issue. Good link. That's how I reach my machine for cron jobs as well. – Githlar Feb 18 '12 at 14:31
But it's not enabled as a daemon. It needs an /etc/rsyncd.conf which isn't provided. And rsync's a picky beast that I only use when absolutely necessary, so I avoid dealing with it at all costs HAHA – Githlar Feb 18 '12 at 14:32

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