Rsync.net | UNIX Integration Overview

Networking
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UNIX Integration Overview

rsync.net was built with UNIX systems in mind - integration could not be simpler.

Create an SSH key, write and run one or more rsync commands, and place into your crontab. Simple.

Remember - we (support@rsync.net) are always happy to write your commands for you to simply cut and paste.

Create an SSH keypair on your system

You don’t need to create an SSH keypair to use rsync.net - you can enter a password each time you connect.

The problem is, you can’t do automated backups if you have to sit there and type the password each night.

This simple HOWTO will step you through creating your keys and uploading the public half of the keypair.

Backing up a UNIX system up to rsync.net with the rsync command

The simplest and most elegant backup of your UNIX or Linux system to rsync.net is a simple 1:1 mirror of your system to our system, using rsync.

Because your rsync.net account has daily snapshots enabled by default, you don’t necessarily need to think about incrementals or versions or past backups. You simply perform a “dumb” mirror to us each night and let our ZFS filesystem handle the daily snapshots just like “Time Machine”.

This detailed rsync HOWTO will step you through the entire process of backing up one or more directories on a UNIX/Linux system to your account at rsync.net. The document includes scheduling the jobs in your crontab.

Browsing Your Backups and Snapshots and Doing Restores

You may access your rsync.net account with ANY tool that runs over SSH/SFTP/SCP .

This means that you may connect with Filezilla, Konqueror, WinSCP, the rsync.net drive mapper, and hundreds of other SFTP/SCP based tools. You may also mount your rsync.net filesystem locally with sshFS.

Your filesystem snapshots (7 daily snapshots for most accounts, 7 daily + 4 weekly for 10TB+ accounts) are located in the .zfs/snapshot directory in the root of your account.

Running Remote Commands Over SSH

Your rsync.net account does not allow an interactive login - you can’t get a shell.

BUT, you may run a large collection of UNIX commands over SSH to manipulate your files, perform measurements, and do basic housekeeping:

ssh user@rsync.net md5 some/file

ssh user@rsync.net rm -rf some/file

ssh user@rsync.net s3cmd get s3://rsync/mscdex.exe

The full list of remote commands you may run in your rsync.net account is here.

Some Additional HOWTOs

Reference Information

- Generating and using ssh keys for automated backups

- Remote commands you may run over SSH

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