On 17.12.15 21:33, Russell Coker via luv-main wrote:
There are a variety of backup systems that start with rsync and manage trees of links. It's not difficult to write your own, rsync the files, run "cp -al" to make a copy with hard links and use today's date in the directory name, and then delete backup directories that are too old.
I'm not grokking the benefit of doing the rsync _and_ a "cp -al". I just include -aH in my rsync options, the -H to preserve hard links. Seems to work. It's almost enough to make one wonder why it's a little bit fiddly to make rsync "just shuddup & copy the listed bits of the filesystem _as_is_, so they can be restored unaltered."
What I'm doing for backups at the moment is to rsync to files on a BTRFS filesystem and then create a snapshot. If I want to retrieve a file that was deleted then I just copy it from a suitably old snapshot.
A bit more basic here. Just a rsync -Hauv to one of several flash sticks, then a diff -qr to confirm the copy's OK, and show any deletions which should be done, usually 0-3 per backup. But then my precious data is diminutive by most standards. Most important is that they come with me off-site. Erik