On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 13:39, Ken Teh <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > You need to be clear about what you mean by backup. If you are keeping a > mirror of your data, rsync is fine. But sometimes you want a version of a > file from 3 months ago. rsync is not going to do that for you. Rsync will absolutely do that for you; If you ask it to. man rsync wrote: > -b, --backup > With this option, preexisting destination files are > renamed as each file is transferred or deleted. You can > control where the backup file goes and what (if any) > suffix gets appended using the --backup-dir and --suffix > options. > > Note that if you don’t specify --backup-dir, (1) the > --omit-dir-times option will be implied, and (2) if > --delete is also in effect (without --delete-excluded), > rsync will add a “protect” filter-rule for the backup > suffix to the end of all your existing excludes (e.g. -f > "P *~"). This will prevent previously backed-up files > from being deleted. Note that if you are supplying your > own filter rules, you may need to manually insert your > own exclude/protect rule somewhere higher up in the list > so that it has a high enough priority to be effective > (e.g., if your rules specify a trailing inclusion/exclu- > sion of ‘*’, the auto-added rule would never be > reached). > > --backup-dir=DIR > In combination with the --backup option, this tells > rsync to store all backups in the specified directory on > the receiving side. This can be used for incremental > backups. You can additionally specify a backup suffix > using the --suffix option (otherwise the files backed up > in the specified directory will keep their original > filenames). > > --suffix=SUFFIX > This option allows you to override the default backup > suffix used with the --backup (-b) option. The default > suffix is a ~ if no --backup-dir was specified, other- > wise it is an empty string. So. use "rsync -avx /src/ /dst/live/ --backup --backup-dir=/dst/shadows/$(date +%Y%m%dT%H%M%S)/" and before rsync deletes anything from /dst/live (the mirror) it copies it to /dst/shadows/20091015T180700. Then you can browse /dst/shadows by date to find accidentally deleted or changed files. There is also rdiff-backup has a sidekick web interface recovery component which I liked until I had destination directories irrevocably become unusable after loosing connectivity to the target during backup, and rsnapshot.pl, which I have had no similar problem with yet, but appears to be slower, and has no web interface for recovery Unless you count apache directory listings.