Tell me more ×
Server Fault is a question and answer site for professional system and network administrators. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 0 down vote favorite
1

rsync
zsync
Is there any other better sync/backup tool available on linux. I have a local installation of my site, a wiki. I wish to make changes to my local site, and then just wish to press a button :D or run the command over a folder, it should check for the diff for my local files vs live-site files, and does the needful in the direction i wish.
That is why filezilla/ cuteFTP will not work for as they donot perform any Diff, will very inefficiently just replace the full folder. It will be awesome if there is any frontend available to rsync/zsync. Preferably zsync as the site, it is tweaked for http transfers.

share|improve this question
Are you looking for a programmatic front-end, a script or a GUI? – mas Jul 13 '09 at 12:20
well a gui, would be best. or script. but definitely gui would be best. Its surprising rsync/zsync are very powerful tools, and there is no gui available for them. – Vivek Sharma Jul 13 '09 at 12:44
Did SiteCopy work for you? – Nathan Hartley Jul 16 '09 at 20:58
hey Nathan, no i didnot get time to check SiteCopy, rather i didnot get anytime to check my wiki. In case if you use it, ps post your response on the tool. thanks – Vivek Sharma Jul 18 '09 at 4:27

4 Answers

up vote 0 down vote accepted

SiteCopy might be a solution. It has worked for me with a similar situation. It unfortunately does not have a GUI, but it would be simple enough to create a shortcut to run it.

share|improve this answer
thanks will check this out. – Vivek Sharma Jul 13 '09 at 15:56
up vote 2 down vote

Sounds like you want to use a versioning tool like svn/Subversion or git rather than rsync. It perfectly fits your need plus the benefit of rolling back if an edit messes something up.

Take a look at the Subersion Homepage and/or git HOWTO.

share|improve this answer
Yes version control is probably a better solution. Although the use of a wiki may throw a wrench in this idea. Some wiki's use a database backend and the ones that use flat files can handle the multiple versions of pages differently resulting in constant renaming and copies of files. So your milage may vary. But both of these cases also make rsync a difficult solution to use as well. – 3dinfluence Jul 13 '09 at 12:11
Yes exactly that is what i want... but the problem is its a free hosting site, and i cannot install any SCM over there? So that is i think any tool working on the lines of ftp with diff in-built – Vivek Sharma Jul 13 '09 at 12:19
@3dinfluence: Have a look at ikiwiki.info - it's a wiki that uses a real version control system on the back end (I use it with Git). – Greg Hewgill Jul 13 '09 at 12:22
@Vivek Sharma: Subversion is usually handeled by the webserver. Maybe you have an option to just turn it on or ask your hoster to enable it for a directory on your vhost. – PEra Jul 13 '09 at 12:27
up vote 0 down vote

wiki's tend to have revision control built-in, and many are file-based (vs stored in a database), so rsync should work perfectly fine. I know folks who do this for 'TWiki' for replicating their installations to mulitple servers.

Perhaps you only have 'ftp' access to your wiki files? you might consider 'wget' to pull from ftp (rather than the http interface) with the recursive (-r) and timestamping (-N) flags set so that it only transfers file that are 'newer' (which isn't exactly a diff).

Once you have a 'copy' of what is out on the ftp server, you'd mark the update time somehow (often with just a 'touch' of a specific marker file). You would then edit normally via your local installation of the same wiki, then use 'find $dir --newer touchmarkerfile' to identify the updates for ftp and transfer them over via a script around an ftp delivery tool.

I have used such a solution before (though I had the advantage of sucking the changes back to the main server via 'wget', so just used the recursive timestamping approach again.

In hindsight, if I had 'ssh' access (I didn't), I would have simply used 'rsync -globtru[n]cv' to simply pull (or push) the files in each direction.

share|improve this answer
up vote 0 down vote

What I don't see is what kind of data format your wiki is in. If you are using a database backend, you can probably get away with some kind of replication. Both MySQL and PostgreSQL support this out-of-box, as well as others.

share|improve this answer
do you mean, i am sync two data-bases at physically at two different locations. I did not know if this was possible ie y i was preferring a flatfile based wiki. – Vivek Sharma Jul 13 '09 at 13:24

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.