Gordon Messmer wrote:
James Bensley wrote:
I have a win2k3 server that its backing up to a CentOS 5.3 server. On the Win2k3 machine I plan to have rsync back up nightly to the CentOS server through ssh. The command I am using is as follows:
rsync -vrPtz -e ssh myuser@myserver:/remote/backup/folder/ /local/backup/folder/
The first thing I'm sure you noticed was that this syntax copies data from a remote system to the local one, which is the opposite of what you described doing, above.
The second thing you will notice, eventually, is that rsync over ssh under Cygwin is unreliable. This has been the case for years and has something to do with Cygwin's emulation of blocking sockets which causes rsync to hang. Even if your backups are working now, I strongly recommend against continuing in this manner.
You have always been able to initiate the command over ssh from a windows box with the answering copy under sshd on linux. Very recent versions may even work the other way.
If you want to use rsync on Windows, the best thing to do is run rsync and ssh daemons on the Windows host. Rsync should only listen for localhost connections. Run your backup jobs from Linux; ssh to the Windows machine and forward a port for rsync. A local rsync can then connect to the Windows machine over the port forward.
Or, if you want it automated more nicely to keep a history of backups with a web interface to browse/restore them, look at backuppc. http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/ You can still use rsync as the copy mechanism if you want.