rsync, vs Partimage, vs other backup

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Thu, 2010-02-25 at 14:25 +0100, Roberto Ragusa wrote:
> Robert Nichols wrote:
> > rsync can be used to maintain a mirror of a file system as long as you
> > aren't particular about preserving metadata such as access times and
> > inode numbers.  The drawback is that a mirror is for one point in time
> > only.  If you want multiple backup levels you have to have storage for
> > several complete mirrors.
> 
> Not if you use hard links, for example
>   rsync --link-dest
> or one of the backup tools using this great rsync option.
> 
> Real world example: 4 backups per day, more than 1000 "full"
> snapshots available in directories named with a timestamp.

I second that. It's almost as good as Apple's TimeMachine (except that
the latter also hardlinks directories, due to Apple mods in their
filesystem).

I also recommend rsnapshot, (which incorporates this funcionality via
rsync). The only downside I can see is that if your source files have
multiple hard links then the counts in the backup will be off (as each
new backup adds an extra link to any file which hasn't changed; also it
will by default make multiple copies of such source files). This
probably doesn't matter to most people.

poc