[vox-tech] Utility to image a hard drive

[Alex Mandel]

Richard Mancusi wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 16:51, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:
>> Quoting Alex Mandel (tech_dev at wildintellect.com):
>>
>>> There's also a text based tool called backup ninja which writes the
>>> rsync scripts for you and several rysnc gui's to help teach you the
>>> syntax which can be tricky, grsync.
>> I have to admit, I really don't get this -- but, on the other hand,
>> haven't tried 'em.  Plain old rsync always struck me as blessedly simple.
>> "rsync -avz olddirectory newdirectory" Just Plain Works -- and
>> generalises to
>> "rsync -avz olddirectory username at newhost:newdirectory" for network
>> copying (esp. if you set RSYNC_RSH=/usr/bin/ssh).
>>
>> There are options you use rarely, such as:
>>
>>    --delete   #Update destination dirs to remove files no longer needed
>>    --exclude=PATTERN
>>    --exclude-from=FILE
>> ...but I need those only rarely, and look 'em up when I do.
> 
> I am with Rick - however I do use some options.  Looked at grsync and
> decided a quick script fit my needs better.  I want to backup from one
> computer to another each night.  If I have a hardware problem, simply
> grab the other computer.  Actually I do it to 3 computers.  Following
> is a rough outline of what I do.  Yes I understand some of it is redundant
> and the log is for the most part an unnecessary habit.
> 
> ------
> #!/bin/bash
> DATE=`date`
> echo $DATE BackUp Started: T61 192.168.9.48 to T61p 192.168.9.49 >>
> rsync_to_T61p.log
> rsync -e ssh -raPH -v >> rsync_to_T61p.log --delete (lots of stuff here)
> (more stuff, and eventually)
> echo $DATE BackUp Finished: T61 192.168.9.48 to T61p 192.168.9.49 >>
> rsync_to_T61p.log
> echo >> rsync_to_T61p.log
> echo >> rsync_to_T61p.log
> ------
> 
> -rich

I condsider grsync a tool to learn rsync with. I took me days to get the
 trailing slashes just the right way on a command to actually put the
files in the way I wanted. And the simulate command does wonders when I
want to test a change on a potentially large dataset, 60GB of photos,
where I want to make sure I'm only sending the changes over the network
to save time, bandwidth and disc writes.

Don't get me wrong rsync is the tool for this type of stuff(In fact it's
the underlying tool for all the apps I've mentioned) I'm merely
suggesting ways to make it easier for someone who doesn't just know
command line innately and has a hard time making sense of the man pages.

Alex