comp.os.linux.networking

On Fri, 21 Mar 2008 16:41:59 +0000, Unruh wrote:

> rsnapshot works well for this kind of backup job. It uses rsync to do
> the backup but keeps hard linked past backups too. It is like a
> differential backup but without the downside of having to work you way
> through the layers.

We do this with rsync using --link-dest (which was added to rsync for
precisely this purpose, as I understand it). It's incredibly
convenient.

The only downside is that, while rsync is smart enough to move only the
parts of a file that have changed, the file system cannot store files
this way. It's either a single file with multiple hard links or multiple
files. So something like a log file which gets a little appended each
day can be wasteful of disk space.

On the other hand, disk space is quite cheap nowadays.

- Andrew