Automatic Backup With Rsync And Cron On Ubuntu

Keeping a directory automatically backed up somewhere is always useful. Every few months this is needed on one machine or another. Here are the steps:

1. First set up ssh keys so passwords are no longer needed.
1. Test things by verifying a ‘ssh user@yourserver.com’ does require a password.
2. Make some ssh keys on your client and then move the public key to the server
1. cd ~/.ssh
2. ls
3. ssh-keygen -t dsa (Keep the defaults by just pressing enter a few times.)
4. cp id_dsa.pub $USER”-id_dsa.pub”
5. scp $USER”-id_dsa.pub” user@yoursever.com:.ssh/
6. echo $USER (and remember name X so it can be used on other machine)
3. Now set things right on the server
1. ssh user@yourserver.com
2. cd ~/.ssh
3. cat X-id_dsa.pub >> authorized_keys
4. rm X-id_dsa.pub
5. exit
4. Test things by verifying a ‘ssh user@yourserver.com’ no longer requires a password.
2. Determine the directory to be backed up and where it will be backed up and test the command to be used.
1. time rsync -atvz ~/local-directory-of-your-choosing/ user@youserver.com:remote-directory-of-your-choosing/
2. log in the server and verify the files are there…
3. Put the command in cron. Because cron is broken in ubuntu you can’t simply do “crontab -e” anylonger. (How can something so basic be broken?!) Instead follow these instructions:
1. vi ~/some_file and put in the cron commands
2. @hourly rsync -atvz ~/local-directory-of-your-choosing/ user@youserver.com:remote-directory-of-your-choosing/
3. crontab ~/some_file
4. crontab -l

Now simply test it out…