Re: [rdiff-backup-users] How to request from new user

[Eric Jensen]

Martin,

This answer will be fairly schematic, but hopefully will be enough to  
get you going.

To do the backup, you'll want to run something like this, assuming / 
home/user/ is your home directory:

rdiff-backup --exclude /home/user/folder1 --exclude /home/user/ 
folder2  /home/user  /external_drive/

Here folder1 and folder2 are directories you don't want to backup -  
repeat as necessary.

Also, here /external_drive/ is the mount point for your external  
drive; after you mount it, if you don't know where it is mounted in  
the filesystem, try 'df' and look at the output to see the path to  
your external drive.  You may want to make a subdirectory on that  
drive for your backup; if so, specify it on the command above.

Run that command once from the command line to do the initial backup;  
if it completes successfully, and your directory in /external_drive/  
looks like you want it, then you can set up the hourly backup.

To do that, you'll use 'cron'.  The file cron uses is called crontab,  
and you edit it with 'crontab -e'.  This should put you into an  
editor, and you'll want to add the single line:

0 * * * *  rdiff-backup --exclude /home/user/folder1 --exclude /home/ 
user/folder2  /home/user  /external_drive/

where the rdiff-backup command is exactly the one you used to do the  
initial backup; rdiff-backup will run a full backup the first time  
you do that command (from the command line as noted above), and then  
make the incremental changes subsequent times you run it.  Save the  
file and exit the editor, and you should be set.  Cron will run your  
backup job every hour on the hour.  (See 'man crontab' for more  
details.)

The backup directory will keep a current mirror of your home  
directory (minus anything you exclude), so you could easily plug it  
into another machine to do the restore.

Hope this helps,

Eric

On Dec 16, 2007, at 8:11 AM, Martin Fisher wrote:

> Hi All
>
> I am a new rdiff-backup user (Ubuntu 7.10) and I wish to use it in a
> relatively simple way: To backup/mirror most, but not all, of the
> folders in my home directory to a folder in an external usb drive, to
> have this run automatically on the hour every hour incrementally  
> when my
> computer is switched on, and to be able to move the external drive  
> to a
> new computer in the event of computer failure and do a restore.
>
> I have read around a little and obviously rdiff-backup can do this,  
> and
> I have installed it, but I don't have a full understanding of how  
> to get
> this going (my command line knowledge is very limited). As my
> requirement is relatively simple I'm sure that somebody is doing the
> same as me, or that this question has cropped up before. Does anybody
> have some step-by-step instructions that would help me setup my  
> backup?
> I would prefer a graphical front end to manage this but if one does  
> not
> exist I would be content to set it running from the command line.