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https://github.com/rsnapshot/rsnapshot

a tool for backing up your data using rsync (if you want to get help, use https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rsnapshot-discuss)
https://github.com/rsnapshot/rsnapshot

backup perl rsnapshot rsync

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a tool for backing up your data using rsync (if you want to get help, use https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rsnapshot-discuss)

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README 

        
# RSNAPSHOT [![Build Status](https://api.travis-ci.org/rsnapshot/rsnapshot.png?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/rsnapshot/rsnapshot)



rsnapshot comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.  This is free software,

and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions.

See the GNU General Public Licence for details.



rsnapshot is a filesystem snapshot utility based on rsync. rsnapshot makes it

easy  to make periodic snapshots of local machines, and remote machines over ssh.

The code makes extensive use of hard links whenever possible, to greatly reduce

the disk space required.



It is written entirely in perl with no module dependencies, and has been

tested with versions 5.004 through 5.24.3. It should work on any reasonably

modern UNIX compatible OS. It has been tested successfully on the following

operating systems:



 - Debian: 3.0 (woody), 9.9 (stretch)

 - Redhat: 7.x, 8.0

 - RedHat Enterprise Linux: 3.0 ES, 5, 6, 7

 - Fedora Core: 1, 3

 - Fedora: 17, 18

 - CentOS: 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

 - WhiteBox Enterprise Linux 3.0

 - Slackware 9.0

 - SuSE: 9.0

 - Gentoo Linux

 - FreeBSD 4.9-STABLE

 - OpenBSD 3.x

 - Solaris 8 (SPARC and x86)

 - Mac OS X

 - IRIX 6.5



If this is your first experience with rsnapshot, you may want to read the man

page which will give you a detailed walk-through on how to get rsnapshot up and

running and also serve as a reference of all available commands.



If you are upgrading from version 1.1.6 or earlier, make sure you read the

file [Upgrading from 1.1](docs/Upgrading_from_1.1).



For installation or upgrade instructions please read the [INSTALL](INSTALL.md) doc.



If you want to work on improving rsnapshot please read the

[CONTRIBUTING](CONTRIBUTING.md) doc.



If you want to ask a question or have a general discussion use the

[Mailing List](https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rsnapshot-discuss).



## COMPATIBILITY NOTICES (Please read)



 1. Note that systems which use GNU cp version 5.9 or later will have problems

    with rsnapshot versions up to and including 1.2.3, if `cmd_cp` is enabled

    (and points at the later gnu cp).  This is no longer a problem since

    rsnapshot 1.2.9, as it strips off trailing slashes when running cp.



 2. If you have rsync version 2.5.7 or later, you may want to enable the

    link_dest parameter in the rsnapshot.conf file.



    If you are running Linux but do not have the problem above, you should

    enable the `cmd_cp` parameter in rsnapshot.conf (especially if you do not

    have link_dest enabled).



    Be advised that currently `link_dest` doesn't do well with unavailable hosts.

    Specifically, if a remote host is unavailable using `link_dest`, there will

    be no latest backup of that machine, and a full re-sync will be required

    when it becomes available. Using the other methods, the last good snapshot

    will be preserved, preventing the need for a re-sync. We hope to streamline

    this in the future.



## CONFIGURATION

Once you have installed rsnapshot, you will need to configure it.

The default configuration file is /etc/rsnapshot.conf, although the exact path

may be different depending on how the program was installed. If this

file does not exist, copy `/etc/rsnapshot.conf.default` over to

`/etc/rsnapshot.conf` and edit it to suit your tastes. See the man page for

the full list of configuration options.



When `/etc/rsnapshot.conf` contains your chosen settings, do a quick sanity

check to make sure everything is ready to go:



    $ rsnapshot configtest



If this works, you can see essentially what will happen when you run it for

real by executing the following command (where interval is `alpha`, `beta`, `etc`):



    $ rsnapshot -t [interval]



Once you are happy with everything, the final step is to setup a cron job to

automate your backups. Here is a quick example which makes backups every four

hours, and beta backups for a week:



    0 */4 * * *     /usr/local/bin/rsnapshot alpha

    50 23 * * *     /usr/local/bin/rsnapshot beta



In the previous example, there will be six `alpha` snapshots

taken each day (at 0,4,8,12,16, and 20 hours). There will also

be beta snapshots taken every night at 11:50PM. The number of

snapshots that are saved depends on the "interval" settings in

/etc/rsnapshot.conf.



For example:



    retain	alpha		6



This means that every time `rsnapshot alpha` is run, it will make a

new snapshot, rotate the old ones, and retain the most recent six

(`alpha.0` - `alpha.5`).



If you prefer instead to have three levels of backups (which we'll

call `beta`, `gamma` and `delta`), you might set up cron like this:



    00 00 * * *     /usr/local/bin/rsnapshot beta

    00 23 * * 6     /usr/local/bin/rsnapshot gamma

    00 22 1 * *     /usr/local/bin/rsnapshot delta



This specifies a `beta` rsnapshot at midnight, a `gamma` snapshot

on Saturdays at 11:00pm and a `delta` rsnapshot at 10pm on the

first day of each month.



Note that the backups are done from the highest interval first

(in this case `delta`) and go down to the lowest interval.  If

you are not having cron invoke the `alpha` snapshot interval,

then you must also ensure that `alpha` is not listed as one of

your intervals in rsnapshot.conf (for example, comment out alpha,

so that `beta` becomes the lowest interval).



Remember that it is only the lowest interval which actually does

the rsync to back up the relevant source directories, the higher

intervals just rotate snapshots around.  Unless you have enabled

`sync_first` in your configuration-file, in which case only the `sync`

pseudo-interval does the actual rsync, and all real intervals

just rotate snapshots.



Also remember that a higher interval will rotate the oldest snapshot of

the interval one step lower as its newest snapshot. For instance if you set

`daily` and `weekly` snapshots and set `daily` to keep 30 snapshots, the 

newest snapshot for `weekly` will be the oldest (30 day old) `daily`

snapshot after a rotation.



For the full documentation, type `man rsnapshot` once it is installed. The

[HOWTO](docs/HOWTOs/rsnapshot-HOWTO.en.html) also has a detailed overview of

how to install and configure rsnapshot, and things like how to set it up so

users can restore their own files.



If you plan on using the `backup_script` parameter in your backup scheme,

take a look at the `utils/`-directory in the source distribution for several

example scripts.  The `utils/rsnapreport.pl` script is well worth a look.



## AUTHORS



Please see the [AUTHORS](/AUTHORS) file for the complete list of contributors.