[CentOS] evaluating backup systems: rsync

[Les Mikesell]

On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 12:53 PM, ken <gebser at mousecar.com> wrote:
>
> Les, thanks for replying.  Yeah, I guess I need to clarify.
>
> I've got a system which is due for an upgrade and, at the same time,
> would like to clean up (delete) files and, in some instances, entire
> directories.  Insurance against sudden disk failure is one other concern.

As a special-case 'restore from scratch' backup,  look at
clonezilla-live (a bootable iso) or ReaR (a package you can run while
the machine is still working).   Either of these will make a backup
copy that you can restore on bare metal and are good to use before big
changes for a quick way to recover from any mistake.

> If I delete files and entire directories on that (source) machine, will
> rsync then subsequently automatically delete them on the destination
> (backup) system?

If you do a simple rsync, you can add the --delete option to tell it
to delete files on the destination if they don't exist in the source.
 You can use rsync -avn --delete ...   to see what will happen if you
aren't sure about the source/dest args (-n = --dry-run so it won't
actually do anything), then repeat without the -n to do it.

> I remember you speaking well of Backuppc previously and so am open to
> using that in future.  At the moment though, I'm looking for the
> simplest possible solution for those three current concerns.

Backuppc is pretty simple since you can install via yum and fill in
the details in the web interface (and I'll answer questions on its
mail list...).  But it is somewhat hard to move its archive once you
get started, so you might want to think about how you want it to work
first.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell at gmail.com