Backup tricks with rsync

Creating backups

The commands below use a folder ~/backup/ as storage. Files are copied with the following features:

• rsync --relative: Tree structure relative to / is preserved (subdirectories created if needed).
  • realpath --no-symlinks: Symlinks not resolved, so in case you use the backup to restore files, they will end up where they were found.
• --recursive: Subfolders too
• --perms: Permissions preserved
• --copy-links: Don't backup links, but the files they are pointing to

Backup a file or folder (basic concept):

# Backup one file
rsync --perms --copy-links --relative $(realpath --no-symlinks file-to-backup) ~/backup/

# Backup a directory and all inside it
rsync --perms --copy-links --relative --recursive $(realpath --no-symlinks folder-to-backup) ~/backup/

# Backup the current directory
rsync --perms --copy-links --relative --recursive $(realpath --no-symlinks .) ~/backup/

Restoring backups

To restore a the backup, while saving a copy of whatever was replaced (just in case, because rsync doesn't do confirmations):

rsync --verbose --recursive --backup-dir=/tmp/backup-just-in-case ~/backup/ /