How to Use the Rsync Utility to Back Up and Restore Linux System – Guide

if you need to go back up your system, rsync is the best method to follow. Rsync (Distant Sync) is a popular and powerful Linux/Unix program for copying and synchronizing files and directories between remote and local systems. We can simply copy/sync data between local and remote directories, across multiple disks and networks, with the help of rsync. It’s easy to overlook the need to keep a server backup until something goes wrong, like a system crash, a natural disaster, or a malware attack. This can potentially bring your business to a halt due to the loss of critical records such as financial and customer information. Your recoverability will be limited by the quality of the most recent backup. Server backups provide the necessary assurance that data will not be lost and can be recovered in the event of a disaster. However, each operating system handles this differently, and while some have built-in features for this, others must be built from scratch. up. Linux operating systems, like many other areas of administration, have more possibilities but also require more knowledge to configure. up correctly.

Backup your entire Linux system using Rsync

Let’s break down the above command and see what each argument does. Important note: Remember that you must delete the destination directory if it exists on your local system. This will avoid the infinite loop. If you want to preserve hard links, just include the -H flag in the above command. Note that it consumes more memory. To restore the backup, just reverse the source and destination paths in the above command. Be aware that this is only suitable for on-premises and standalone systems. If your system is being actively accessed by some other systems on the network, it’s not a better solution. Because the systems contents can be constantly updated every minute and some files can change during the rsync process. Say, for example, when rsync hits file 2, the contents of the previous file (File 1) might change. This will leave you with a dependency error when you need to use that backup. In these cases, a snapshot-based backup is the best approach. Because the system will be “frozen” before the backup process starts and “thawed” when the backup process ends, so that all files are consistent.

Final note

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