Related pages
This page describes and links to projects related to rdiff-backup, either because they depend on or work with rdiff-backup, or because they are competing backup programs.
Software written for rdiff-backup:
- Christian Marie has written an rdiff-backup Nagios plugin. You should always monitor your backups, and Nagios is a popular and flexible system monitoring tool.
- slbackup is a graphical backup program included in Skolelinux. Apparently it uses rdiff-backup as the backend. (Here is a page with some instructions.)
- rdiff-backup-web is a web-based frontend to rdiff-backup by David Evans. In alpha state as of Dec 2005.
- David Kempe has another web-based frontend to rdiff-backup (screenshots). Unfortunately, copyright issues prevent him from releasing the source, but you can mail him if you are interested.
Articles/books that mention rdiff-backup
- (2005-10-13) Automated Backups With rdiff-backup by Falko Timme.
- (2004-09-03) HOWTO: Automate remote backups using rdiff-backup and perl by Gavin Henry in FedoraNews.org.
- (2004-03-22) Personal Backups with rdiff-backup by Roberto Alsina.
- Kirk Bauer's book Automating UNIX and Linux Administration (Amazon link) has a few pages on rdiff-backup.
Other related backup programs:
Here are short descriptions of other mirroring/diffing backup programs which may compete with rdiff-backup. Of course you should consider me biased in favor of rdiff-backup, but I recognize that rdiff-backup is not the best choice for every situation, and I try to be fair in my comparisons.
- rsync - the inspiration
for rdiff-backup. Although rsync and rdiff-backup do not share any
code, rdiff-backup uses the rsync algorithm, invented by rsync author
Andrew Tridgell.
Compared to rdiff-backup, rsync is faster, so it is often the better choice when pure mirroring is required. Also rdiff-backup does not have a separate server like rsyncd (instead it relies on ssh-based networking and authentication).
However, rdiff-backup uses much less memory than rsync on large directories. Second, by itself rsync only mirrors and does not keep incremental information (but see below). Third, rsync may not preserve all the information you want to backup. For instance, if you don't run rsync as root, you will lose all ownership information. Fourth, rdiff-backup has a number of extra features, like extended attribute and ACL suport, detailed file statistics, and SHA1 checksums.
- rsync-based scripts - Because
rsync does not save incremental information, it is usually
inappropriate for backing up. There are several utilities which use
the rsync binary, but keep old data by using rsync --link-dest option
and rotating the destination directory.
Compared to rdiff-backup, these are usually faster but use more memory and disk space. They make each increment appear as a separate complete directory, which is a neat feature. On the other hand, these will usually be missing the features that are missing from rsync (see above).
Here are various programs which use the rsync strategy:
- Mike Rubel's rsync snapshots - the original rsync hardlinking script
- rsnapshot - based off Mike Rubel's article
- Dirvish - perhaps the most feature-filled of these programs
- Backup Buddy - a simple, easy-to-use option
- rsback
- Snapback2
- rsync-incr
- rsyncbackup
- ccollect
- RIBS backup
- BackupPC - A great, innovative program which notices when you save many copies of the same file. Definitely take a look at this if you back up many similar systems to the same destination (e.g. many windows PCs to a central linux server).
- Unison - a interesting bidirectional mirroring tool. Similar to rsync, but changes propagate in either direction. Consider this if you need to keep two directories synced and either may get edited.
- duplicity - Not really like rdiff-backup because it doesn't mirror at all, but it's here because it's written by the same author. It uses the rsync algorithm but with a totally encrypted/untrusted destination. Unfortunately duplicity has been looking for a maintainer for a while.