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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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[–] clif@lemmy.world 5 points 2 hours ago

I'll never not upvote Veronica Explains. Excellent creator and excellent info on everything I've seen.

[–] TheWilliamist@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

I still prefer tar for quick and dirty same box copies.

tar cf - * | (cd /target; tar xfp -)
[–] atk007@lemmy.world 13 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

Rsnapshot. It uses rsync, but provides snapshot management and multiple backup versioning.

[–] Tja@programming.dev 4 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Yes, but a few hours writing my own scripts will save me from several minutes of reading its documentation...

[–] atk007@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

It took me like 10 min to setup rsnapshot (installing, and writing systemd unit /timer files) on my servers.

[–] Tja@programming.dev 2 points 2 hours ago

I'm sure I could script something similar in under 10 (hours).

Yah, I really like this approach. Same reason I set up Timeshift and Mint Backup on all the user machines in my house. For others rsync + cron is aces.

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 hours ago

Veeam for image/block based backups of Windows, Linux and VMs.
syncthing for syncing smaller files across devices.

Thank you very much.

[–] RestrictedAccount@lemmy.world 2 points 8 hours ago (3 children)

I use syncthing.

Is rsync better?

Syncthing works pretty well for me and my stable of Ubuntu, pi, Mac, and Windows

[–] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 3 points 2 hours ago

I’m not super familiar with Syncthing, but judging by the name I’d say Syncthing is not at all meant for backups.

[–] conartistpanda@lemmy.world 3 points 3 hours ago

Syncthing is technically to synchronize data across different devices in real time (which I do with my phone), but I also use it to transfer data weekly via wi-fi to my old 2013 laptop with a 500GB HDD and Linux Mint (I only boot it to transfer data, and even then I pause the transfers to this device when its done transferring stuff) so I can have larger data backups that wouldn't fit in my phone, since LocalSend is unreliable for large amounts of data while Synchting can resume the transfer if anything goes wrong. On top of that Syncthing also works in Windows and Android out of the box.

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 3 points 4 hours ago

its for a different purpose. I wouldn't use syncthing the way I use rsync

[–] quick_snail@feddit.nl 14 points 16 hours ago (2 children)
[–] HereIAm@lemmy.world 4 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Compared to something multi threaded, yes. But there are obviously a number of bottlenecks that might diminish the gains of a multi threaded program.

[–] Tja@programming.dev 4 points 4 hours ago

With xargs everything is multithreaded.

[–] okamiueru@lemmy.world 7 points 8 hours ago

That part threw me off. Last time i used it, I did incremental backups of a 500 gig disk once a week or so, and it took 20 seconds max.

[–] vext01@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 12 hours ago

I used to use rsnapshot, which is a thin wrapper around rsync to make it incremental, but moved to restic and never looked back. Much easier and encrypted by default.

[–] Mio@feddit.nu 4 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (2 children)

I think the there are better alternatives for backup like kopia and restic. Even seafile. Want protection against ransomware, storage compression, encryption, versioning, sync upon write and block deduplication.

[–] lazynooblet@lazysoci.al 3 points 6 hours ago

comparing seafile to rsync reminds me the old "Space Pen" folk tale.

[–] Toribor@corndog.social 0 points 4 hours ago

This exactly. I'd use rsync to sync a directory to a location to then be backed up by kopia, but I wouldn't use rsync exclusively for backups.

[–] Xylight@lemdro.id 3 points 12 hours ago

rsync for backups? I guess it depends on what kind of backup

for redundant backups of my data and configs that I still have a live copy of, I use restic, it compresses extremely well

I have used rsync to permanently move something to another drive though

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 19 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah it’s slow

What's slow about async? If you have a reasonably fast CPU and are merely syncing differences, it's pretty quick.

[–] pathief@lemmy.world 4 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

It's single thread, one file at a time.

That would only matter if it's lots of small files, right? And after the initial sync, you'd have very few files, no?

Rsync is designed for incremental syncs, which is exactly what you want in a backup solution. If your multithreaded alternative doesn't do a diff, rsync will win on larger data sets that don't have rapid changes.

[–] Newsteinleo@midwest.social 1 points 5 hours ago

For a home setup that seems fine. But I can understand why you wouldn't want this for a whole enterprise.

[–] NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 58 points 1 day ago (10 children)

I would generally argue that rsync is not a backup solution. But it is one of the best transfer/archiving solutions.

Yes, it is INCREDIBLY powerful and is often 90% of what people actually want/need. But to be an actual backup solution you still need infrastructure around that. Bare minimum is a crontab. But if you are actually backing something up (not just copying it to a local directory) then you need some logging/retry logic on top of that.

At which point you are building your own borg, as it were. Which, to be clear, is a great thing to do. But... backups are incredibly important and it is very much important to understand what a backup actually needs to be.

[–] Colloidal@programming.dev 2 points 2 hours ago

Borg gang represent!

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