Rsync backup to tar or gzip archive

[Les Mikesell]

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.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com