rbackup
Welcome to rbackup, a script to do backups over rsync.
This script is designed for a scenario in which the local machine is more
trusted than the remote one; typically the local one might be the one with
the tape drive, and/or the one that isn't running the Internet service
that's being backed up and is less likely to get cracked.
This does a "pull" of a directory tree using the rsync(1) tool and creates
version directories so that any particular snapshot (eg. the one before
things went pear-shaped) can be used. To save disk space, identical files
are hardlinked across version directories. This makes use of an rsync
behaviour whereby a new file is built and relinked in place of the original
rather than modifying the original in place.
Starting with version 2.0 this uses rsync's --link-dest option to create
hardlinked snapshots from existing snapshots.
To run this, you need to create a backup target directory containing:
- a subdirectory called "current", which will be the rsync target and
will contain the most current snapshot.
- a file called "whence" which typically contains a single line saying
"server.example.net:stuffdir/" or such, as the "from" argument to rsync.
This may be preceded by additional rsync options (eg. includes/excludes).
Additional directories will be created, named in the format YYMMDD-HHMM,
containing snapshots at times in the past when rbackup was run.
Rbackup takes a single commandline option, the pathname to the backup
directory.
Doing ssh from cron and not having it barf wanting a passphrase is left
as an exercise to the reader.
The rpurge command cleans up old backups, keeping a logarithmic series
of them to (hopefully) provide the optimal mix of fallback dates.
The rreview and rapprove commands allow a "diff -r" to be done between
backup generations to review and approve changes.
Homepage should remain <http://www.leftmind.net/projects/rbackup/>.
This program was initially designed to backup up one of my home machines
(the web/news/mailserver) to the other box with the tapedrive (the
backupserver), but is distributed due to indications it might be more
generally useful.
Thanks to Kai Henningsen, of the .de branch of the Scary Devil Monastery,
for prompting me to put this distribution together.
Special thanks to Andrew Tridgell for doing rsync(1) in the first place.
Legalese:
# Copyright (C) 2000,2001,2003,2006,2015 Anthony de Boer
#
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of version 2 of the GNU General Public License as
# published by the Free Software Foundation.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
# Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
I'm not including the usual "either version 2 of the License, or (at your
option) any later version" text since I want to reserve the chance to
read future versions before using them, just to be sure they doesn't promise
free phone support or sexual favours from the program's author.
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