Remote backup

[Anthony Morton]

> A few of us have done checks with Backup Bouncer with encouraging  
> results, and I'm now using 3.0.0pre9 to back up my own files.  So  
> far so good.

I should add - Rsync is of course a command line solution, which may  
not suit your needs.  I dare say some of the GUI tools out there will  
adopt the new Rsync once there's a final release.

But if you're comfortable with the command line and want to experiment  
with the latest Rsync now, note that you'll need to build from source,  
and there are some specific patches to pick up things like HFS+  
creation times.

First, download and unpack the source tarball and the separate patches  
from the website:
<http://rsync.samba.org/ftp/rsync/rsync-3.0.0pre9.tar.gz>
<http://rsync.samba.org/ftp/rsync/rsync-patches-3.0.0pre9.tar.gz>

Note the patches unpack into a separate 'patches' directory within the  
same source folder.

Then point Terminal at the source folder and use the following command  
line recipe:

patch -p1 <patches/flags.diff
patch -p1 <patches/crtimes.diff
./prepare-source
./configure
make
sudo make install

(You'll need the Developer Tools installed for this to work, of course.)

You should then be able to do metadata-aware backups using a command  
line like the following, for local-to-local backups:

/usr/local/bin/rsync -aNHAX --fileflags Source-Folder/ Destination- 
Folder/

Or for local-to-remote backups:

/usr/local/bin/rsync -aNHAX --fileflags -e ssh --rsync-path=/usr/local/ 
bin/rsync Source-Folder/ Host:Destination-Folder/

(You'll need to have built the same rsync on the remote machine - I've  
got this working between an Intel Leopard box and a PPC Tiger box  
without hassles.)

The man page lists a bunch of other options that can be useful: a  
favourite of mine is -i to itemise all changes.  There are options for  
all kinds of filters and logging facilities too - see the man page.

Hope this might be helpful to someone....

Tony M.