Rdiff-backup: Incremental Remote Backups

rdiff-backup is a simple and efficient utility. It can be used to make a remote backup of a directory via SSH. The differences are then saved in archives. rdiff-backup Main page

To install it:

  emerge rdiff-backup
  

To make a backup on a remote computer, rdiff-backup must be installed on both machines.

For example, if the remote machine is called remotehost.remotedomain, to make a backup you simply do:

  rdiff-backup ~/mydir remoteuser@remotehost.remotedomain::mydir-backup
  

This creates a new directory named mydir-backup in the HOME directory of the user remoteuser on remotehost.remotedomain. If the directory already exists, it is updated according to the content of mydir, and the differences are also stored.

For more complete examples: Examples on the rdiff-backup site.

To make authentication automatic, it is recommended to use key-based authentication with SSH.