possibly new rsync trick: rotating snapshots

[Mike Rubel]

> That looks good, particularly the description of `cp -al'.  I'll add a
> link.

Hi Martin,

First of all, thanks *so* much for all of your work on rsync. It's a
really terrific tool, and I seem to keep finding new uses.  :)

> I would use rsync's daemon mode, rather than NFS, to do backups to a
> remote server.  It's equally secure and much more efficient.
> 
> Similarly, if my user base was sufficiently technical to use rsync to
> retrieve files, then I'd just export the backups that way.  I guess
> this is only useful in a situation where you trust the users not to
> read each other's files.

Quite right--I didn't mean to imply that NFS to a remote location (or even
across a firewall from a DMZ) is a good idea; I would use rsync over ssh
for that, or rsyncd as you suggest.  The NFS idea was more for a dedicated
"snapshot server", where the main file server would be mirrored directly
across a dedicated subnet.  The advantages of using that approach would be
transparency for users (the snapshots would just look like an ordinary
directory on the file server) and protection from server root compromise.
I'll try to clarify that on the site.

Thanks again,
Mike