rsnapshot [1] is a filesystem snapshot utility for making backups of local and remote systems.

Using rsync and hard links, it is possible to keep multiple, full backups instantly available. The disk space required is just a little more than the space of one full backup, plus incrementals.

Depending on your configuration, it is quite possible to set up in just a few minutes. Files can be restored by the users who own them, without the root user getting involved.

There are no tapes to change, so once it’s set up, your backups can happen automatically untouched by human hands. And because rsnapshot only keeps a fixed (but configurable) number of snapshots, the amount of disk space used will not continuously grow.

rsnapshot is written entirely in Perl. It should work on any reasonably modern UNIX compatible OS, including: Debian GNU/Linux, Red Hat Linux, Fedora Linux, SuSE Linux, Gentoo Linux, Slackware Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Solaris, Mac OS X, and even IRIX.

Interesting is also the use of Rsnapshot accessing LVM.

[1] http://www.rsnapshot.org/

• added tar-gzip for option -C so tar uses options cvzf and does the taring and gzipping in one step. This will take more time until the VM will be restarted, but uses much less space. Reported by Matteo Costa.
• fixed problem, so rsync was always used no matter if -R or -D was set or not. Reported by Matteo Costa.
• fixed typos

Download

See Project Page.

Download
You usually find the latest script in my download seciton. See also my Project page.

What changed?
The script can now be started by using unix like option p.e.

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./vmware-backup.sh -N webserver -F webserver-backup -H www.example.com -C gzip
./vmware-backup.sh -N webserver -R -H www.example.com -v
./vmware-backup.sh -N webserver -D root@backup.example.com:/backups -H www.example.com -v

It can tar and optionally gzip or bzip the content or you can use rsync to local or remote host. There is a verbose mode and the script mails the log, so you can see if the backup failed. See ./vmware-script.sh -h for more info.

Any Suggestions?
If you like adding a feature, don’t hesitate to mail me, you can find my e-mail adress in the source of the script or on the Contact page. Comments are very welcome.

Have fun