2

A simple question about rsnapshot.

In order to perform daily backups I'm going to add lines to cron in my Ubuntu.

Then, why do I have also these lines in the rsnapshot.conf ?

#########################################
#           BACKUP INTERVALS            #
# Must be unique and in ascending order #
# i.e. hourly, daily, weekly, etc.      #
#########################################

interval        hourly  6
interval        daily   7
interval        weekly  4
#interval       monthly 3

If I use cron, should I disable them ? thanks

ps. I've just realized that in the crontab I still have "hourly" and "daily". Should I then uncomment only the one I use in the crontab ? And what's the point to specify hourly if it is already specified in cron ? I'm a bit confused.

# crontab -e
0 */4 * * * /usr/local/bin/rsnapshot hourly
30 23 * * * /usr/local/bin/rsnapshot daily

1 Answer 1

4

The interval directives in your rsnapshot.conf are saying for the named backup (daily, weekly etc.) keep n copies.

In the above, you are keeping the last 6 copies of your hourly backups, the last 7 copies of your daily backup etc.

You then need to run the hourly, daily. etc backups using cron.

In your example above you are running the hourly backup every 4 hours (6 times a day) and the daily backup once a day at 23:30.

You need to uncomment the interval directives that you intend to use but uncommenting the onee you don't use shouldn't cause a problem.

2
  • So, what's confusing here is just the numerical example, Iguess. Let's say I have "interval hourly 2" and "0 */5 * * * /usr/local/bin/rsnapshot hourly". In this case I perform the hourly backup type every 5 hours and only 2 copies are kept. Is this correct ?
    – aneuryzm
    Jan 8, 2011 at 14:00
  • 1
    @Patrick: Yes, you will be performing 5 hourly backups and keeping the last 2.
    – user9517
    Jan 8, 2011 at 14:11

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