Time Machine-style backups with rsync (2018)

Posted by accrual 5 days ago

Time Machine-style backups with rsync (2018)(samuelhewitt.com)

114 points | 56 commentspage 2

00deadbeef 5 days ago|

Reminds me of a tool I used to use that did a similar thing: https://github.com/jeremywohl/glastree

kunley 5 days ago||

Isn't it also how timeshift [1] backups are working?

[1] https://github.com/linuxmint/timeshift

zimpenfish 5 days ago||

Used this technique (albeit counter-based, not time-based) successfully for backing up the 2006 World Cup site newsfeed[0] configurations/data. Had 6 rotating backups on two hosts. Never had to use them (as best I remember) but it was definitely comforting to know they were there in case of urgent rollback.

[0] Not strictly the right name but I've forgotten. Y!uk people of that era know what I mean.

EGreg 5 days ago||

Why make hard links when you can use rsync or syncthing to just make an actual copy on an external hard drive eg via wifi or just remotely?

c0nsumer 5 days ago||

Hard links are file level dedupe.

And then once all references to the inode are removed (by rotating out backups) it's freed. So there's no maintenance of the deduping needed, it's all just part of how the filesystem and --link-dest work together.

kej 5 days ago|||

The hard links are to the most recent backup before the one happening now in the script, so that you aren't storing full copies of files that haven't changed between backups.

00deadbeef 5 days ago||

It does make an actual copy but then it builds a directory structure that you can browse by date (like Time Machine). That directory contains hard links so only one copy of a file is ever backed up but you see contents that match the date of the backup.

nocman 5 days ago||

sounds similar to rdiff-backup ( https://rdiff-backup.net ).

I know some folks that have been using that for a very long time as well.

cyberax 5 days ago||

One big drawback of these solutions is that they cannot archive the system apps properly. Nor can they be used during the OS setup.

TM integration is just so convenient...

theteapot 5 days ago||

Need to combine this with LVM or BTRFS or similar to be a true snapshot. Rsnapshot supports LVM snapshot pretty good.

fenazego 5 days ago|

Once you have btrfs you don't really need rsync anymore, its snapshot + send/receive functionality are all you need for convenient and efficient backups, using a tool like btrbk.

TKAB 3 days ago||

What happened to tarsnap? Anybody using it?

cperciva 3 days ago|

It's still there; and yes, people are using it.

mattbillenstein 5 days ago|

restic to s3 has been very reliable - haven't tried borg.