[RndTbl] Ubuntu desktop vs server.

[Trevor Cordes]

On 2016-10-17 Justin Richard wrote:
> I'm about to setup Rsync to transfer files to a backup machine.
> 
> So I'm looking around the internet for people's best practices and
> opinions. I'm noticing that many of the admins are doing things in a
> combo of GUI in desktop and cmd line opposed to strictly cmd line in
> server.

If you're talking about whether to use rsync at the command line vs
finding a gui for it, it's best to learn the command line.  If you're
trying to do backups, try using these options:

*** see notes below before running this! It can delete your files! ***

rsync -vaxHAX /source/ user at desthost:/dest/

The only tricky part is figuring out if you want to transfer source
dir and below or the contents of source/ (with a slash).  I find it
easier to always use a trailing slash on source/.

But you don't even need to really be an expert or remember the slash,
just make sure you specify --dry-run (or -n) and look at what rsync is
doing as a "dry run" (no files are actually copied/deleted) and ensure
it's all okie dokie before taking out the --dry-run to actually do the
backup.  Once you're sure it's all good, put your command line in a
script or alias (or cron) and use that to run it whenever you need it.