rsnapshot is a filesystem snapshot utility. It uses rsync to take snapshots of local and remote filesystems for any number of machines, and then rotates the snapshots according to your rsnapshot.conf.
rsnapshot comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions. See the GNU General Public Licence for details.
If you are installing for the first time (and just want the defaults):
Run these commands for a quick installation from source code: (skip these commands if you have installed rpm or debian package)
$ ./autogen.sh # Generates the configure script.
$ ./configure --sysconfdir=/etc
$ sudo make install
$ sudo cp /etc/rsnapshot.conf.default /etc/rsnapshot.conf
Open up /etc/rsnapshot.conf with a text editor, and modify it for your system.
Make sure the config file syntax is valid (remember, tabs, not spaces):
$ /usr/local/bin/rsnapshot configtest
The rsnapshot HOWTO is recommended reading for first time setups. It will walk you through this process in great detail. The rsnapshot HOWTO can be found online at http://www.rsnapshot.org/
If you are upgrading from a previous installation of rsnapshot 1.1.x,
please read the file: docs/Upgrading_from_1.1
There are no special instructions for upgrading from rsnapshot 1.2.x to
1.3.x, since both use config_version 1.2.
If you are not sure whether you need to do anything to upgrade your old rsnapshot.conf, you can run
$ make upgrade or
$ rsnapshot upgrade-config-file
or
$ rsnapshot -c /etc/rsnapshot.conf upgrade-config-file
If you require more precise control over the locations of files:
You can pass the following options to ./configure for more control over where various parts of rsnapshot are installed. The example values shown also happen to be the defaults.
–prefix=/usr/local
This will install everything under /usr/local
–sysconfdir=/usr/local/etc
This will install the example config file (rsnapshot.conf.default) under /usr/local/etc. This will also be the default directory where rsnapshot looks for its config file. It is recommended that you copy rsnapshot.conf.default and use it as a basis for the actual config file (rsnapshot.conf).
–bindir=/usr/local/bin
This will install the rsnapshot program under /usr/local/bin
–mandir=/usr/local/man
This will install the man page under /usr/local/man
–with-perl=/usr/bin/perl
Specify your preferred path to perl. If you don’t specify this, the build process will detect the first version of perl it finds in your path.
–with-rsync=/usr/bin/rsync
Specify your preferred path to rsync. If you don’t specify this, the build process will detect the first version of rsync it finds in your path. You can always change this later by editing the config file (rsnapshot.conf).
–with-cp=/bin/cp
Specify the path to GNU cp. The traditional UNIX cp command is not sufficient. If you don’t specify this, the build process will detect the first version of cp it finds in your path. If you don’t have the GNU version of cp, leave this commented out in the config file (rsnapshot.conf).
–with-rm=/bin/rm
Specify the path to the rm command. If you don’t specify this, the build process will detect the first version of rm it finds in your path.
–with-ssh=/usr/bin/ssh
Specify your preferred path to ssh. If you don’t specify this, the build process will detect the first version of ssh it finds in your path. SSH is an optional feature, so it is OK if it isn’t on your system. Either way, if you want to use ssh, you need to specifically enable this feature by uncommenting the “cmd_ssh” parameter in the config file (rsnapshot.conf).
–with-logger=/usr/bin/logger
Specify your preferred path to logger. If you don’t specify this, the build process will detect the first version of logger it finds in your path. If you want syslog support, make sure this is enabled in the config file. Syslog support is optional, so if you don’t have it or comment it out it’s OK.
–with-du=/usr/bin/du
Specify your preferred path to du. If you don’t specify this, the build process will detect the first version of du it finds in your path. The “du” command only gets used when rsnapshot is called with the “du” argument to calculate the amount of disk space used. This is optional, so if you don’t have it or comment it out it’s OK.