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01.31.07
How to Backup Your Mac Incrementally Over SSH
 By
Pete Freitag
Do you have access to a shell account on a unix server with some spare space? If so it's pretty
easy to incrementally backup your files securely with SSH.
I titled this entry Howto Backup your Mac incrementally over SSH but this technique can also be used to backup any computer that can run rsync and ssh. They are already installed on Mac OS X, and most linux / unix servers.
Step 1 - Create a folder to store your backups on the remote server
mkdir backup
Make sure that your SSH user has permission to write to this directory.
Step 2 - Setup automatic authentication Optional
This step allows the backups to run without prompting you for a password when it runs. You can omit this step but you will have to type in your ssh password each you run backup.
I wrote an article called Setting up public key authentication over SSH that will guide you through this step.
If you own the server you might also want to create a user specifically for this process.
Step 3 - Use rsync to backup files incrementally
rsync -e "ssh" -rca --delete-after ~/test/ pete@myserver.example.com:backup
Now lets break it down a bit:
* rsync - this syncs the local directory to with the server directory.
* -e "ssh" - this tells rsync to use ssh if your want to pass in other ssh options such as port you can do that in the quotes: -e "ssh -p 12345"
* -rca recursive, checksum, and archive
* --delete-after - this will delete files on the server if you delete them locally.
* ~/test/ - I am backing up / syncing the test directory inside my home directory on my mac.
* pete@myserver.example.com:backup - my ssh username is pete, my remote ssh server hostname is myserver.example.com, and I am backing up into the directory ~pete/backup.
Excluding directories
Sometimes you might want to exclude a directory from being backed up, perhaps your Music directory since that is already backed up on your ipod.
rsync -e "ssh" -rca --delete-after --exclude=Music --delete-excluded ~/test/ pete@myserver.example.com:backup
Continue reading this article.
About the Author:
Pete Freitag (http://www.petefreitag.com/) is a software engineer, and
web developer located in central new york. Pete specializes in the
HTTP protocol, web services, xml, java, and coldfusion. In 2003 Pete
published the ColdFusion MX Developers Cookbook with SAMs Publishing.
Pete owns a Firm called Foundeo (http://foundeo.com/) that specializes
in Web Consulting, and Products for Web Developers.
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