Simple whole volume copy

[Henri Shustak]

> Right. That's why I need rsync. I'm really not looking for a utility, but a
> command line program which will do incremental backup, and rsync is the only
> one I'm aware of that does that in Mac OS.

There are also some other options available. Although, I have not tested them on Mac OS X 10.6. 

  - PsyncX is one project which jumps to mind : 
    <http://psyncx.sourceforge.net/>.

  - Even more options are listed at the following URL : 
    <http://www.lbackup.org/alternatives>

If you are after incremental backup then you may be interested in the '--backup' and 'backup-dir' arguments. In addition, the '--link-dest' option of rsync may be useful. This option allows for incremental hard linked backups as outlined by Mike Rubel : <http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/>

LBackup makes use of Mike Rubel's hard linked approach for backup sets : 

  - LBackup home page : 
    <http://www.lbackup.org>

  - Screen casts on how LBackup works : 
    <http://www.lbackup.org/screencasts>

  Note : I recommend having a look at the "Basic Backup Local Machine"
         screen cast to determine if LBackup is an option worth further
         consideration.

If you are going to roll your own backup script around rsync then as previously mentioned, the following URL will probably be very useful with regards the flags you may wish to use to preserve various meta data on Mac OS X : <http://www.lbackup.org/synchronizing_disk_images_between_machines>
 
Quoted below is an extract from the script (available from the above link). This command has many flags which will be of interest to you for an incremental copy which preserves Mac OS X meta-data. However, as previously mentioned I recommend that you use Backup-Bouncer or some other approach to check that rsync is preserving what you require.

>   # Use rsync to copy / update the remote file
> 
>   ${path_to_rsync} --rsync-path=${path_to_rsync} \
>   -aNHAXEx --delete --progress --stats --protect-args --fileflags --force-change \     
>   ${local_source_directory} \         
>   ${remote_server_user}@${remote_server_address}:${remote_destination_directory}

Before running rsync any of the options listed above I suggest that you check the rsync man page / rsync patch documentation for details. In particular, be very carful if you use the '--delete' option with rsync. Also, note the command quoted above makes no mention of the '--link-dest' option. 

The LINUX man page for rsync is available at the following URLs (just to name a couple) :

  - <http://linux.die.net/man/1/rsync>
  - <http://www.samba.org/ftp/rsync/rsync.html>


Personally, I like rsync very much. It is a great tool with an amazing community!


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