Rsync backup to tar or gzip archive

[Mark Haney]

Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-01-24 at 15:22, akonstam at trinity.edu wrote:
>   
>>>> I am wanting to backup my Linux machine at work using Rsync.  I have a
>>>> mounted SMB share which it will be backing up to.  I would like to rsync
>>>> "into" an archive, so the backup is all in one file.  I've done some
>>>> googling and haven't found a real clear way to do an rsync backup into
>>>> either a tar or gzip archive.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>         
>>> Why do you want to use rsync for this? Are you doing something
>>> that you can not do using the -u option of tar or the -f option
>>> or zip? If so, you may want to look at standard backup software.
>>>
>>>       
>
>   
>> I agree that for backing up to a mounted filesystem archive rsync is not
>> needed.
>>
>> I , however, am having a blank in figuring out how to backup to a
>> filesystem that is not mounted but is on another machine. It seems like
>> some combination of rsync (or scp) and tar aught to be able to do
>> this. But the method eludes me. I mean something other than creating
>> the tar file on the local machine and then copying to a remote
>> filesystem on another machine.
>>     
>
> Rsync isn't going to back up to a tar/zip file no matter how
> you use it.  It will copy to/from remote systems with the
> syntax:
> rsync -essh -av . user at remote_host:/path/to/dir
> (current directory to remote)
> rsync -essh -av user at remote_host:/path/to/dir .
> (remote dir to current)
>
> If you want automatic backups controlled by a remote server,
> look at backuppc: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/.  It
> can use stock rsync on the client side while the server
> uses a special compressed format for storage.
>
>   
rsnapshot is another good one (http://www.rsnapshot.org), but it doesn't 
backup to an archive, however it works extremely well.

-- 
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Mark Haney
Sr. Systems Administrator
ERC Broadband
(828) 350-2415