Linux Backup via rsync Primer Tutorial

Linux Backup via rsync Primer Tutorial

On a Macbook Pro laptop you can use the Mac OS X Time Machine approach to backing up your data, as we talked about with Mac Backup Tutorial. However, a Mac OS X laptop has access to an underlying Linux operating system, that has had great software, including backup software, written for it over many years.

What would be the advantages of using a Linux method of backing up on a Macbook Pro laptop? Can think of …

• Linux processes are not in your face … while you get on with other things in the usual GUI environment
• able to be run at a time of your choosing (via shell scripting with crontab, or at login via a .profile arrangement, perhaps), even interactively … though Time Machine can do some of this too
• the backup can run in the background … though Time Machine can do this too
• the backup process could easily leave you a log
• Linux backups are capable of handling remote backup tasks and scenarios

Today’s slideshow presentation starts off with a photo of our …

1. … Seagate Backup Plus Portable Drive ℹ hooked up to our Macbook Pro via a black USB lead plugged into one of the Macbook Pro USB ports
2. we start up the Macbook Pro application called Terminal in the Utilities folder of the Applications folder
3. the Linux command

   df -k

   will show you the disks and removables (of which our Seagate Backup Plus is one), the latter of which normally get a name starting with “/Volumes/” as for our “/Volumes/Laura”

4. we are going, today, to backup the local MAMP server to the Seagate Backup Plus via

   rsync -r /Applications/MAMP /Volumes/Laura/

   as you can see with ℹ (and on)

5. now to indicate some success with this to you, we turn the Firefox web browser to Open File one of the backup HTML files (because it is a step too far to think you will be able to run PHP from the backup disk … perhaps tomorrow) … maybe you remember india_map.html from the series of blog postings ending with PHP Geographical Image Map Yet More Google Charts Tutorial ? … you can see with ℹ
6. okay, that works, and so now, what about if india_map.html changes back at the Macbook Pro hard disk’s MAMP’s htdocs folder … we make a change to the <h1>India</h1> heading to <h1>India Map</h1>
7. so now we are going to incrementally backup the local MAMP server to the Seagate Backup Plus via

   rsync -ruv /Applications/MAMP/ /Volumes/Laura/MAMP/

   as you can see with ℹ

8. now to indicate some success with this to you, we turn the Firefox web browser to Open File that same india_map.html HTML file … as you can see with ℹ

Of course, as with all Linux a

man rsync

command ℹℹ helps explain things further, and we hope this tutorial and Linux.com’s useful link is of some help for you too.

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