Backing up with rsync

Rsync copies data to another directory, another disk volume, or another machine. It only copies what needs to be copied; that is, if a file hasn't changed since the last time you backed it up, rsync won't bother copying it again. Even better, if only part of a large file has changed, rsync only copies those bytes.

I don't see any point in calling rsync from Applescript, but if you must, you can. I'd just write a Terminal bash script. For my system, it looks like this:

 cd $HOME
 rsync -av -e ssh . tonyl@192.168.3.237:ibook
 
 

The 192.168.3.237 is a Linux server. I'm using ssh as the transport protocol. This backs up my home directory to the "ibook" directory under "tonyl"'s account on the Linux box.

If I were backing up to another directory or drive here, I might instead do:

 cd $HOME
 rsync -av . /Otherplace
 
 

If I were concerned about including resource forks, I'd add "-E":

 rsync -aEv . /Otherplace
 
 

Some like to use "-aEv --delete" to remove files on the archive that no longer exist here. I deliberately do not do that. I have plenty of space on the Linux box.

I prefer to run this manually, but you can also add it to cron or launchd, periodic tasks or even iCal.

If you must do this with Applescript, use "do shell script", but it's really silly to waste that overhead.

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