[K12OSN] OT: Backuppc config issue

[Nils Breunese]

David Hopkins wrote:

> Well, after following Nils advice and posting on the backuppc forum,
> the solution for backing up the localhost was to use
>
> /usr/bin/sudo /usr/bin/rsync [options] ....
>
> and to turn off the requirement for a tty session in the sudo options.
> But, as I posted on the backuppc forum, I'm still confused about the
> syntax for rsync as far as the error log for backuppc is concerned.
> It shows the rsync command as
>
> rsync [whole bunch of options] . /home/
>
> which I thought (and testing from a shell as root seems to confirm)
> that this would copy '.' to /home/.  But ... when run by backuppc it
> creates a backup

That's because BackupPC works quite differently from what you expect.  
BackupPC doesn't use the stock rsync binary on the server end for  
instance, but its own Perl implementation (File::RsyncP) and adds the  
--server --sender flags to the command to set the client to be backed  
up in rsync server mode to send the data to the BackupPC server.  
BackupPC does a whole lot of magic on its own end to make all the  
pooling and compression possible. It is a mighty powerful system  
though and we use it to backup all of our machines. If you want to  
know more about all the technical details, join the backuppc-users  
mailinglist and check out its archives.

Nils Breunese.