There is one thing that most Linux backup tools have in common and that is their underlying technologies. In most cases one of the tools that make the GUI backup tools possible is the venerable rsync. Rsync is an incredibly fast and lightweight file copy tool that can not only copy files to and from a local machine, it can also copy over a network connection – which makes rsync an ideal candidate for user-generated backup scripts or cron jobs.

In this tutorial you will learn how easy it is to use rysnc to not only back up specified directories to an external usb drive, but also to backup over a network connection via ssh.

Command structure

The structure of the rsync command is:

rsync [OPTIONS] SOURCE DESTINATION

Where SOURCE is the location of the directory to be backed up and DESTINATION is where the backup will be placed.

Now the structure of the command changes when you are employing a network facility such as ssh. At that point the command structure would look like:

rsync [OPTIONS] ssh SOURCE user@destination:/directory

Where user is the user name on the remote machine, destination would be either an IP address or domain, and /directory is the explicit path to the directory you want to back up to.

Usage

For the first example we are going to backup the directory /home/jlwallen/Documents to the directory /media/disk/BACKUPS. This destination is a directory located on an external USB drive obviously mounted to /media/disk. The command for this backup will be:

rsync -avh /home/jlwallen/Documents /media/disk/BACKUPS

This is where we run into our first “gotcha”. What happens with the above command is that any subdirectory in /home/jlwallen/Documents will be created on /media/disk/BACKUPS. So if you want to create a similar directory structure on the destination you should first create a parent directory similar to that of the source. So before you run the rsync command issue this command:

mkdir /media/disk/BACKUPS/Documents

The new rsync command would be:

rsync -avh /home/jlwallen/Documents /media/disk/BACKUPS/Documents

The options used in the above command are:

• a: Archive mode
• v: Verbose mode
• h: Output in human readable format.

Now let’s backup the same source to a remote location with the help of secure shell. It will help your cause to first make sure you can log into the remove machine via ssh. Once you have that working you are ready to backup. Using our same example we are going to backup to user jlwallen at the IP address 192.168.1.10 to the directory /home/jlwallen/BACKUPS/Documents. To do this the command would look like:

rsync -avhe ssh /home/jlwallen/Documents jlwallen@192.168.1.10:/home/jlwallen/BACKUPS/Documents

The added option is e which allows you to specify the remote shell to use.

You will be prompted for the remote users’ password and then the coping will begin. But what if you don’t want to have to use a password? If you are wanting to set up automated, remote backups you will have to allow this process to happen without entering a password. To do this you have to create an SSH key without a password. Here are the steps for this:

create an ssh key on the source machine with the command:

ssh-keygen -t dsa

Press enter when prompted for a password.

Once the key is created copy that key to the destination key with the following command:

ssh-copy-id -i .ssh/id_dsa.pub username@destination

Where username is the user on the remote machine and destination is the IP or domain of the remote machine.

Now rsync copying can be done without having to enter a password.

Final thoughts

The nice thing about this setup is you can now use rsync to create a cron job for backup automation. Rsync is an incredibly flexible and reliable means for backing up your directories and files. It should be since it is the foundation that so many other backup tools were based on.

This particular backup solution features: user-friendly graphical interface, cross-platform availability (Linux, Mac, and Windows), flexible backup configurations, backups can be stored nearly anywhere, entire computer backup, one time backups, scheduled backups, file/folder exclusion, and more.

Getting and installing

Main Window

Even though fwbackups can work on multiple OSes, we’re going to just illustrated installing and using on Linux. There is a simple way to install fwbackups because it will most likely be in the repository of your distribution. Open up your Add/Remove Software utility, do a search for fwbackups, select the results, and click apply. When the installation is complete you will find fwbackups in the Preferences sub menu of the System menu on the GNOME desktop. When you first start fwbackups you will see the main window.

The main window is comprised of five “tabs”. The default tab is the Overiew tab which tells you how many backups you have done.

First Step

Backup Sets

The first thing you need to do is add a set to your backup. Let’s say you want to backup your ~/Documents directory. To do this click the New Set button to open up a new window where you configure this set. From this new window you can add either folders or files (you can add multiple files/folders to a single set).

You will also have to add a name to the backup. This is very obvious. In the Name field at the top of the window, enter the name you want to use for the backup.

From this same window (where you add files/folders) you configure the following:

Destination: Where do you want the backup to be stored. In Linux you can store this locally or on a remote server via ssh.

Your backup set

Times: If this is a scheduled backup when do you want it to occur. This is also where you configure the recurrance of the backup for this set.

Options (Simple): The majority of options for the backup set are here. You can configure the backup to be recursive, the format the backup will be in (tar, tar.gz, rsync, etc), how many old copies of the backups to keep, etc.

Options (Advanced): Here you can add commands to run before or after the backup. You can also change the nice value as well as what to exclude from the backup.

Once you have configured your backup set you can test the set by clicking the Backup Set Now button.

You can also do a One Time backup if you need to backup something just once. This set will not be saved to your sets.

Restore

Restore Window

To restore a backup click the Restore button. Depending upon the type of restore you want to do (either locally or remotely) the settings will vary.

To do a remote restore you will use ssh (just like you use in the remote backup). The only downfall is you will have to know the explicite path to the backup file as you can not browse for the file when doing a remote restore.

Once you have everything configured, hit the Start Restore button to fire up your restore.

Final Thoughts

The fwbackups tool is one of the easiest backup utilities I have come across. If you have a need for a cross-platform backup utility fwbackups might very well be the tool to place in your toolkit.