Remote Server Backup With rsync
rsync is remote file copy program under Linux. It synchronize file trees across local disks, directories or across a network. It has several advantage over bulky backup software that consume lot of system resources and slow down your pc. rsync uses the remote-update protocol to speed up file transfers when the destination file already exists. The rsync remote-update protocol allows you to transfer differences between two sets of files using an efficient checksum-search algorithm.
rsync Features:
- support for copying links, devices, owners, groups and permissions
- exclude and exclude-from options similar to GNU tar
- a CVS exclude mode for ignoring the same files that CVS would ignore
- can use any transparent remote shell, including rsh or ssh
- does not require root privileges
- pipelining of file transfers to minimize latency costs
- support for anonymous or authenticated rsync servers (ideal for mirroring)
Usage:
You need to specify a source and a destination in which one may be remote.
rsync *.php foo:src/
this would transfer all files matching the pattern *.php from the current directory
to the directory src on the machine foo. If any of the files already exist on the remote system then the sync remote-update protocol is used to update the file by sending only the differences.
rsync -avz foo:src/bar /data/tmp
this would recursively transfer all files from the directory src/bar
on the machine foo into the /data/tmp/bar directory on the local machine.
The files are transferred in “archive” mode, which ensures that symbolic links,
devices, attributes, permissions, ownerships etc are preserved in the transfer.
rsync -avz foo:src/bar/ /data/tmp
a trailing slash on the source changes this behavior to transfer all files from the directory src/bar on the machine foo into the /data/tmp/. A trailing / on a source name means “copy the contents of this directory”. Without a trailing slash it means “copy the directory”. This difference becomes particularly important when using the –delete option.
rsync somehost.mydomain.com::
this would list all the anonymous rsync modules available on the host somehost.mydomain.com.
Available Options
-v, –verbose increase verbosity
-q, –quiet decrease verbosity
-c, –checksum always checksum
-a, –archive archive mode
-r, –recursive recurse into directories
-R, –relative use relative path names
-b, –backup make backups (default ~ suffix)
–backup-dir make backups into this directory
–suffix=SUFFIX override backup suffix
-u, –update update only (don’t overwrite newer files)
-l, –links copy symlinks as symlinks
-L, –copy-links copy the referent of symlinks
–copy-unsafe-links copy links outside the source tree
–safe-links ignore links outside the destination tree
-H, –hard-links preserve hard links
-p, –perms preserve permissions
-o, –owner preserve owner (root only)
-g, –group preserve group
-D, –devices preserve devices (root only)
-t, –times preserve times
-S, –sparse handle sparse files efficiently
-n, –dry-run show what would have been transferred
-W, –whole-file copy whole files, no incremental checks
–no-whole-file turn off –whole-file
-x, –one-file-system don’t cross filesystem boundaries
-B, –block-size=SIZE checksum blocking size (default 700)
-e, –rsh=COMMAND specify rsh replacement
–rsync-path=PATH specify path to rsync on the remote machine
-C, –cvs-exclude auto ignore files in the same way CVS does
–existing only update files that already exist
–ignore-existing ignore files that already exist on the receiving side
–delete delete files that don’t exist on the sending side
–delete-excluded also delete excluded files on the receiving side
–delete-after delete after transferring, not before
–ignore-errors delete even if there are IO errors
–max-delete=NUM don’t delete more than NUM files
–partial keep partially transferred files
–force force deletion of directories even if not empty
–numeric-ids don’t map uid/gid values by user/group name
–timeout=TIME set IO timeout in seconds
-I, –ignore-times don’t exclude files that match length and time
–size-only only use file size when determining if a file should be transferred
–modify-window=NUM Timestamp window (seconds) for file match (default=0)
-T –temp-dir=DIR create temporary files in directory DIR
–compare-dest=DIR also compare destination files relative to DIR
-P equivalent to –partial –progress
-z, –compress compress file data
–exclude=PATTERN exclude files matching PATTERN
–exclude-from=FILE exclude patterns listed in FILE
–include=PATTERN don’t exclude files matching PATTERN
–include-from=FILE don’t exclude patterns listed in FILE
–version print version number
–daemon run as a rsync daemon
–no-detach do not detach from the parent
–address=ADDRESS bind to the specified address
–config=FILE specify alternate rsyncd.conf file
–port=PORT specify alternate rsyncd port number
–blocking-io use blocking IO for the remote shell
–no-blocking-io turn off –blocking-io
–stats give some file transfer stats
–progress show progress during transfer
–log-format=FORMAT log file transfers using specified format
–password-file=FILE get password from FILE
–bwlimit=KBPS limit I/O bandwidth, KBytes per second
–read-batch=PREFIX read batch fileset starting with PREFIX
–write-batch=PREFIX write batch fileset starting with PREFIX
-h, –help show this help screen
Environment Variables
CVSIGNORE : The CVSIGNORE environment variable supplements any ignore patterns in .cvsignore files. See the –cvs-exclude option for more details.
RSYNC_RSH : The RSYNC_RSH environment variable allows you to override the default shell used as the transport for rsync. This can be used instead of the -e option.
RSYNC_PROXY : The RSYNC_PROXY environment variable allows you to redirect your rsync client to use a web proxy when connecting to a rsync daemon. You should set RSYNC_PROXY to a hostname:port pair.
RSYNC_PASSWORD : Setting RSYNC_PASSWORD to the required password allows you to run authenticated rsync connections to a rsync daemon without user intervention. Note that this does not supply a password to a shell transport such as ssh.
USER or LOGNAME : The USER or LOGNAME environment variables are used to determine the default username sent to a rsync server.
HOME : The HOME environment variable is used to find the user’s default .cvsignore file.
Exit Values
RERR_SYNTAX 1 – Syntax or usage error
RERR_PROTOCOL 2 – Protocol incompatibility
RERR_FILESELECT 3 – Errors selecting input/output files, dirs
RERR_UNSUPPORTED 4 – Requested action not supported: an attempt was made to manipulate 64-bit files on a platform that cannot support them; or an option was speciifed that is supported by the client and not by the server.
RERR_SOCKETIO 10 – Error in socket IO
RERR_FILEIO 11 – Error in file IO
RERR_STREAMIO 12 – Error in rsync protocol data stream
RERR_MESSAGEIO 13 – Errors with program diagnostics
RERR_IPC 14 – Error in IPC code
RERR_SIGNAL 20 – Received SIGUSR1 or SIGINT
RERR_WAITCHILD 21 – Some error returned by waitpid()
RERR_MALLOC 22 – Error allocating core memory buffers
RERR_TIMEOUT 30 – Timeout in data send/receive
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