[Discuss] rsnapshot vs. rdiff-backup

[gaf at blu.org (Jerry Feldman)]

On 12/03/2013 07:12 PM, Richard Pieri wrote:
> Jerry Feldman wrote:
>> rsnapshot can run on BSD. It uses the rsync --link-dest feature. You
>> generally have an hourly.0 directory. When rsnapshot runs it renames
>
> Really? That may have changed in the past few years. Used to be that
> rsnapshot used GNU cp's --link option to copy hourly.1 to hourly.0
> after rotation. Regardless, you still need a wrapper to handle that
> rotation.
It has used --link-dest as long as I have been using it. In the
rsnapshot.conf file:
# If your version of rsync supports --link-dest, consider enable this.
# This is the best way to support special files (FIFOs, etc) cross-platform.
# The default is 0 (off).
#
link_dest       1

I don't remember this being 0 when I first started using it 5 years ago.
>> is a perl script. While rsnapshot creates snapshorts, it is really a
>> backup system because it creates multiple directories.
>
> It's not the multiple replicas that make it a backup system. It's the
> discrete medium that makes it a backup system. If you put your
> snapshots or replicas on the same medium as the original data and that
> medium fails or is corrupted or stolen or burns to the ground then you
> lose it all, originals and snapshots and replicas all together.
>
I would agree 100%.. I have always used a separate discrete media.

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
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