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Using rsync for backups, because it's not shiny and new (tinkerbetter.tube)

submitted 2 months ago by mesamunefire@piefed.social to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

140 comments fedilink hide all child comments

You might not even like rsync. Yeah it's old. Yeah it's slow. But if you're working with Linux you're going to need to know it.

In this video I walk through my favorite everyday flags for rsync.

Support the channel:
https://patreon.com/VeronicaExplains
https://ko-fi.com/VeronicaExplains
https://thestopbits.bandcamp.com/

Here's a companion blog post, where I cover a bit more detail: https://vkc.sh/everyday-rsync

Also, @BreadOnPenguins made an awesome rsync video and you should check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eifQI5uD6VQ

Lastly, I left out all of the ssh setup stuff because I made a video about that and the blog post goes into a smidge more detail. If you want to see a video covering the basics of using SSH, I made one a few years ago and it's still pretty good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FKsdbjzBcc

Chapters:
1:18 Invoking rsync
4:05 The --delete flag for rsync
5:30 Compression flag: -z
6:02 Using tmux and rsync together
6:30 but Veronica... why not use (insert shiny object here)

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[–] ryper@lemmy.ca 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (6 children)

I was planning to use rsync to ship several TB of stuff from my old NAS to my new one soon. Since we're already talking about rsync, I guess I may as well ask if this is right way to go?

[–] Cyber@feddit.uk 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

It depends

rsync is fine, but to clarify a little further...

If you think you'll stop the transfer and want it to resume (and some data might have changed), then yep, rsync is best.

But, if you're just doing a 1-off bulk transfer in a single run, then you could use other tools like xcopy / scp or - if you've mounted the remote NAS at a local mount point - just plain old cp

The reason for that is that rsync has to work out what's at the other end for each file, so it's doing some back & forwards communications each time which as someone else pointed out can load the CPU and reduce throughput.

(From memory, I think Raspberry Pi don't handle large transfers over scp well... I seem to recall a buffer gets saturated and the throughput drops off after a minute or so)

Also, on a local network, there's probably no point in using encryption or compression options - esp. for photos / videos / music... you're just loading the CPU again to work out that it can't compress any further.

[–] ryper@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's just a one-off transfer, I'm not planning to stop the transfer, and it's my media library, so nothing should change, but I figured something resumable is a good idea for a transfer that's going to take 12+ hours, in case there's an unplanned stop.

[–] Cyber@feddit.uk 1 points 2 months ago

One thing I forgot to mention: rsync has an option to preserve file timestamps, so if that's important for your files, then thst might also be useful... without checking, the other commands probably have that feature, but I don't recall at the moment.

rsync -Prvt <source> <destination> might be something to try, leave for a minute, stop and retry ... that'll prove it's all working.

Oh... and make sure you get the source and destination paths correct with a trailing / (or not), otherwise you'll get all your files copied to an extra subfolder (or not)

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