It works fine, my issue with that it’s just not efficient. If you want a “time travel” feature, your only option is to duplicate data. There, compression, and encryption for off-site backups is where other tools shine.
I have it add a backup suffix based on the date. It moves changed and deleted files to another directory adding the date to the filename.
It can also do hard-link copied so that you can have multiple full directory trees to avoid all that duplication.
No file deltas or compression, but it does mean that you can access the backups directly.
Thanks! I was not aware of these options, along with what other poster mentioned about –link-dest. These do turn rsync into a backup program, which is something the root article should explain!
(Both are limited in some aspects to other backup software, but they might still be a simpler but effective solution. And sometimes simple is best!)
Agree. It’s neat for file transfers and simple one-shot backups, but if you’re looking for a proper backup solution other tools/services have advanced virtually every aspect of backups it pretty much always makes sense to use one of those instead.
suicidaleggroll@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Not true. Look at the --link-dest flag. Encryption, sure, rsync can’t do that, but incremental backups are fine and compression I handle at the filesystem level anyway.
eager_eagle@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Isn’t that creating hardlinks between source and dest? Hard links only work on the same drive. And I’m not sure how that gives you “time travel”.
BCsven@lemmy.ca 3 hours ago
Snapper and BTRFS. Its only adjusts changes in data, so time travel is just pointing to what blocks changed and when, and not building a duplicate of the entire file or filesystem. A snapshot is instant, and new block changes belong to the current default.