--link-dest=server::location/folder

[Matt McCutchen]

On Wed, 2009-02-11 at 14:12 -0700, lewis butler wrote:
> I'm wondering if I can use link-dest to compare rsync to a remote  
> directory.
> 
> rsync -aCHh --stats  --link-dest=akane::backup/ranma.daily.1 /  
> myserver::akane/ranma.daily.0
> 
> Something like that?  Is it going to work like it does when doing a  
> local rsync with a local link-dest directory?

--link-dest works with a remote destination just like it does with a
local one.  However, you shouldn't repeat the remote access information
in the --link-dest option.  Just give a relative path (which will be
interpreted from the destination directory; this trips people up) or an
absolute path (which will be interpreted from the root of the daemon
module).  Either of the following would work:

rsync -aCHh --stats  --link-dest=../ranma.daily.1 \
	/ myserver::akane/ranma.daily.0

rsync -aCHh --stats  --link-dest=/ranma.daily.1 \
	/ myserver::akane/ranma.daily.0

> I have actually tried this command, but it's been building a file list  
> for a very long time now. The data is only (only!!) about 12GB.

I suggest you upgrade both sides to rsync >= 3.0.0 to use the
incremental recursion mode, which interleaves file-list building with
destination updating for somewhat better performance.

> (What I want is to have several 'versions' of the current machine  
> backed-up to a second machine)

I'll mention that there are several tools that automate this process,
such as rsnapshot and dirvish, but I don't know if any of them support
writing to an rsync daemon.  If you would like to use one of those
tools, you could run it on the destination machine to manage the
versions (assuming you have shell access) but still use the rsync daemon
for the upload.

-- 
Matt