4

I'm looking for an alternative to using this, it doesn't have to use FTP, but it should provide the same functionality as the "--mirror" option of wget where it only downloads new and changed files.

wget --mirror --preserve-permissions --directory-prefix=/hdd2/website-backups --exclude-directories=special,stats --ftp-user=user --ftp-password=pass ftp://ftp.domain.com

Currently the above command is how a remote site is being backed up every few days via cron job on a home server. The remote site has moved to a new host with SSH available and I've already got public/private keys setup for SSH. Now I would like to use something a little more secure than wget/ftp for the automated backup, but since this site has a lot of image files most of which will not change, I don't really want to zip up the entire documentRoot and download it every time.

Improve this question

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
8

rsync is the standard utility for this:

rsync -avz -e ssh source/ user@destServer:/dest/
  • a For archive, keeps permissions, type stamps, etc.
  • v for verbose
  • e ssh , use over ssh
  • z for compression, if you want that. It won't try to re-compress archive (zip) files.

rsync generally comes with Linux distributions. It also meets your requirement of not transferring things that have not changed.

Improve this answer
2
  • 2
    +1 for rsync. Here are a few useful rsync flags: when you are running rsync interactively (mostly during testing) use the --progress flag. Some informative statistics can be gathered by using the --stats flag. Also, if you dont want rsync to hog all of your bandwidth you can limit its download rate by using --bwlimit=KBPS KBytes per second. I also find it useful to use the -e parameter when I have to use a nonstandard ssh port like this -e" ssh -p 10222"
    – faultyserver
    Oct 27, 2009 at 15:54
  • Mention of the -e flag when non-standard ports are being used also definitely comes in handy. :)
    – joebert
    Oct 27, 2009 at 18:51

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge that you have read and understand our privacy policy and code of conduct.

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