I've been using rdiff-backup for a while but recently had to start over from scratch with unraid while troubleshooting a problem with my server (turned out a sata cable went bad after a couple years).

 

Anyway, I like unMENU and figured this time around I might as well just go ahead and create a package that everyone can use to install rdiff-backup just in case anyone else wants to use it.

 

This is my first time creating an unMENU package. I tested it and it seems to work fine for me but YMMV. I'm running 5b14 if that matters.

 

rdiff-backup requires python (which is already in unMENU packages, you just have to install it) and librsync (not already included). I therefore have 2 packages here that you need: librsync and rdiff-backup. I separated them because I wasn't sure how well it would work to have them both install in the same script.

 

You'll probably also want to install ssh so you can remote backup.

 

Anyway, long story short, make sure to install python and then install librsync and rdiff-backup from below.

 

Edit 3/17/14: updated the rdiff-backup-unmenu-package.conf with new url

rdiff-backup-unmenu-package.conf

librsync-unmenu-package.conf

This looks interesting.  I currently have my own home baked Rsync scripts backing up from unraid to an old NAS.

 

Are there any major pros and cons with rdiff backup and Rsync ?

I find rdiff-backup best for my needs. From the website:

 

Compared to rdiff-backup, rsync is faster, so it is often the better choice when pure mirroring is required. Also rdiff-backup does not have a separate server like rsyncd (instead it relies on ssh-based networking and authentication).

 

However, rdiff-backup uses much less memory than rsync on large directories. Second, by itself rsync only mirrors and does not keep incremental information (but see below). Third, rsync may not preserve all the information you want to backup. For instance, if you don't run rsync as root, you will lose all ownership information. Fourth, rdiff-backup has a number of extra features, like extended attribute and ACL suport, detailed file statistics, and SHA1 checksums.

 

I like rdiff-backup because it keeps the backup as a current mirror and then stores all the earlier changes as diffs. A few years back I had a catastrophic failure and was able to just mount my backup drive and it ran exactly as the failed drive did.

 

But if I end up deleting something, or needing an earlier version of a file, I can just restore it from the diff.

Thanks for that. I'll give it a shot this week. I like the idea of being able to recover from a delete. Something my current scripts don't do.

Unless I am doing something wrong it looks like I need rdiff-backup installed on my destination device too.  I'm going to need some time to see if that's possible.

You could create a local backup and then rsync it over.

 

Otherwise there are a bunch of guides here for backing up to NFS, SSHFS, and SMBFS

 

http://wiki.rdiff-backup.org/wiki/index.php/TipsAndTricks