linux - Incremental back using rsync

04
2013-09
  • Romski

    I want to sync incremental changes to a remote server using rsync and --link-dest. To test it locally I have created the following structure to test locally:

    src
   d1
      f1
   d2
      f1 # exactly the same src/d1/f1
      f2
target
   d1
      f1 # exactly the same src/d1/f1

    I am running the following command to sync incremental changes

    rsync -arv --link-dest=/tmp/target/d1 /tmp/src/d2/ /tmp/target/d2

    The output is

    sending incremental file list
created directory /tmp/target/d2
./
f1
f2

    I only expected f2 to be synced as f1 is unchanged. Checking the number of hardlinks on /tmp/target/d1/f1 show that it only has 1 link

    $ ls -l target/d1/f1
-rw-rw-r-- 1 user user 3 Jun 22 12:46 target/d1/f1
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    Related Question

    linux - rsync as a background process?
  • Dario

    I've been using rsync to sync a bunch of files between my two servers. I set a cron job that would run rsync every minute. However, I'd prefer if I could have it run always, so that files are synced the moment they are changed. What would be the best way to do this?

    Thanks.


    • Related Answers
  • Doug Harris

    If you have inotify in your kernel, check out inotify-tools.

    There's an example on that page:

    #!/bin/sh
# A slightly complex but actually useful example
inotifywait -mrq --timefmt '%d/%m/%y %H:%M' --format '%T %f' \
 -e close_write /home/billy | while read date time file; do
    rsync /home/billy/${file} rsync://[email protected]/backup/${file} && \
    echo "At ${time} on ${date}, file ${file} was backed up via rsync"
done
  • akira

    use the inotify system of linux, in combination with incron.