Simple Local Rsync Use

Earlier this month I posted how I use rdiff-backup to keep a copy of files on a remote system, along with incremental changes. I also have an external USB/Firewire 2.5 inch hard drive that holds older files. I decided I wanted to copy all of the files from my laptop hard drive that were not present on the external hard drive.

The local data is stored in /data and the external drive is located at /mnt. I keep identical directories on each partition.

orr:/home/richard$ ls /data
Recycled        iso             misc            tmp             writing
code            lpc             test            vmware          zip
documents       media           tgz             work
orr:/home/richard$ ls /mnt
Recycled        iso             misc            tmp             writing
code            lpc             test            vmware          zip
documents       media           tgz             work

I decided to use Rsync to get the files not on /mnt from /data to /mnt. In the following example I copy files involving the /data/documents directory.

orr:/data$ rsync -vr /data/documents/* /mnt/documents 
building file list ... done
doc/DYNAMIC HOST CONFIGURATION PROTOCOL.doc
doc/Speaker Submission form.doc
doc/bejtlich_proposal_issa-denver_2005.doc
doc/bejtlich_proposal_technosecurity_2006.doc
...edited...
txt/why_CREATE.txt
xls/SCCNS_Chapters.xls
xls/remember.xls

sent 26401643 bytes  received 2518 bytes  621274.38 bytes/sec
total size is 190958410  speedup is 7.23

When finished, /mnt/documents has all of the files it originally had, along with the new files found in /data/documents. I like this system because rsync will create new directories, if needed, on /mnt to hold new files.

Next I will burn the contents of the /mnt directories to DVD for long-term storage.

Comments

Anonymous said…
rsync is an awesome tool to use for this purpose. I use it to backup my notebook to my personal backup server every night. Using rsync, ssh, keychain and cron it all happens while I sleep.

my backup script first "sources" my keychain file

source /home/me/.keychain/notebook-name-sh

rsync -v -u -a --rsh='ssh -i /home/me/.ssh/my-ida_rsa' \
--stats \
/home/me/ \
mybackupuser@server:/home/mybackupuser/backups/notebook/


Keychain is very handy but I would only use it on a well protected single user system. The alternative is to use a password-less ssh key but I can't bring myself to do that. A quick google search found this little keychain howto.
http://www.cs.utah.edu/support/faq/faq-ssh.html
3:43 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Zeek in Action Videos

Image
This is a quick note to point blog readers to my Zeek in Action YouTube video series for the Zeek network security monitoring project .  Each video addresses a topic that I think might be of interest to people trying to understand their network using Zeek and adjacent tools and approaches, like Suricata, Wireshark, and so on.  I am especially pleased with Video 6 on monitoring wireless networks . It took me several weeks to research material for this video. I had to buy new hardware and experiment with a Linux distro that I had not used before -- Parrot .  Please like and subscribe, and let me know if there is a topic you think might make a good video.
Read more

MITRE ATT&CK Tactics Are Not Tactics

Image
Just what are "tactics"? Introduction MITRE ATT&CK  is a great resource, but something about it has bothered me since I first heard about it several years ago. It's a minor point, but I wanted to document it in case it confuses anyone else. The MITRE ATT&CK Design and Philosophy document from March 2020 says the following: At a high-level, ATT&CK is a behavioral model that consists of the following core components: • Tactics, denoting short-term, tactical adversary goals during an attack; • Techniques, describing the means by which adversaries achieve tactical goals; • Sub-techniques, describing more specific means by which adversaries achieve tactical goals at a lower level than techniques; and • Documented adversary usage of techniques, their procedures, and other metadata. My concern is with MITRE's definition of "tactics" as "short-term, tactical adversary goals during an attack," which is oddly recursive. The key word in the tacti...
Read more

New Book! The Best of TaoSecurity Blog, Volume 4

Image
  I've completed the TaoSecurity Blog book series . The new book is  The Best of TaoSecurity Blog, Volume 4: Beyond the Blog with Articles, Testimony, and Scholarship .  It's available now for Kindle , and I'm working on the print edition.  I'm running a 50% off promo on Volumes 1-3 on Kindle through midnight 20 April. Take advantage before the prices go back up. I described the new title thus: Go beyond TaoSecurity Blog with this new volume from author Richard Bejtlich. In the first three volumes of the series, Mr. Bejtlich selected and republished the very best entries from 18 years of writing and over 18 million blog views, along with commentaries and additional material.  In this title, Mr. Bejtlich collects material that has not been published elsewhere, including articles that are no longer available or are stored in assorted digital or physical archives. Volume 4 offers early white papers that Mr. Bejtlich wrote as a network defender, either for technica...
Read more