BackupPC - rsync over ssh on an alternate port

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 16:33:00 -0400

I recently set up BackupPC to back up a remote server using rsync over ssh. I won't go into the gory details now, but in order to make it work on an alternate port, I had to make the following change to the config file for this host:


$Conf{RsyncClientCmd} = '$sshPath -p 1234 -q -x -l root $host rsync $argList+';

This will connect to ssh running on port 1234 on the remote $host. If you try changing $sshPath to include the switch, BackupPC tries to escape the arguments when using them, and that results in weird errors.

BackupPC - enabling compression

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 16:22:00 -0400

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.


$Conf{RsyncClientCmd} = '$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.

Ruslan Sivak - BackupPC

BackupPC - rsync over ssh on an alternate port

BackupPC - enabling compression