BackupPC is a high-performance, enterprise-grade system for backing up Linux, WinXX and MacOSX PCs and laptops to a server's disk. BackupPC is highly configurable and easy to install and maintain.

I recently set up BackupPC , and although it took a little bit of setting up and getting used to, I'm pretty happy with it. One thing that I didn't realize right away is that it doesn't do transfer compression, as the perl RSync library it uses doesn't support it.

The way to enable compression is to use ssh compression and to backup using method 'rsync'.

Here is the configuration option that I used to enable it.

view plain print about
1$Conf{RsyncClientCmd} = '$sshPath -C -o CompressionLevel=9 -q -x -l root $host rsync $argList+';

-C enables compression and -o CompressionLevel=9 sets the compression level to 9 (same as gzip). According to the man page, the default level is 6, and you should probably leave it at 6, unless you've got CPU power to spare.

The man page also mentions that for backups on a fast network, ssh compression will probably slow things down instead of speeding them up.

This entry was posted on March 13, 2009 at 4:22 PM and has received 6692 views. There are currently 31 comments. Print this entry.