Synchronize your data using Grsync
Keeping your data synchronized with an external data storage is essential to keep your documents and other data secure. Rsync is a robust and popular tool for doing exactly this; so what better tool to use as your personal backup solution.
There are of course other tools for doing this such as Unison, which I wrote about earlier. Which tool you prefer to use for backing up your data is a matter of personal preference, as long as you actually use it. This article will not directly use the rsync tool, but instead discuss the GTK front-end, which gives the user access to the most usable functions and settings.
We will start by installing grsync with your favorite package manager. If you are using a Debian based distribution, just execute apt-get install grsync to get hooked up.
Next, we will initialize a directory with data and a directory to keep the backup. The backup directory should of course be located on an external disk, network drive or something other than the local computer.
$ mkdir -p sync/data sync/backup
$ echo “This is the contents of the first file” > sync/data/one.txt
$ echo “This is also some dummy content” > sync/data/two.txt
The time has now come to start grsync. Start by creating a new session by clicking add and figure out a name to describe your sync pair.
Browse to the source and destination directories to select them. Note that if you are synchronizing to a FAT, NTFS or other type of file-system not supporting Unix permissions, uncheck “preserve permissions”, since those depend on how the partition is mounted, and not the actual permissions.
Before executing the task, it might be wise to run the simulation to see possible problems or just to get reassurance of which files will be copied. When you are ready to start the sync, just press execute and hope for the best.
The files should now hopefully be correctly synchronized to the sync/backup directory. You might also notice that the actual command to rsync is displayed on the top. This command could be useful if you want to automate this process using cron or something similar.
To conclude, I have to say that Grsync is a very competent and easy to use tool, suitable for both beginners and more advanced users. The GUI looks polished and usable but will still give you detailed information if you want.
Thanks for this. I needed something a little more intuitive to help my parents back up their Dapper machine. Cheers!
I think grsync is a worth-while tool for parents too. It is just a matter of setting up a profile for them and then just letting them know how to run it.
Another way I have used is to create a script containing of the rsync command and just put it in a convenient location, such as the desktop. Then the parents can just click the icon to have it backup the files automatically.
Anyway, thanks for your comment!
I want to back up from my /home/me/ directory to a NAS harddrive (called Ting) sat plugged into my wireless router.
How do I give that address to grsync, please? Nothing I try works!
I tried smb://ting/jon/
I tried 192.168.2.2/jon/
//ting/jon/
Both these work as addresses in Konqueror.
I even created a folder under mnt called nas……..mnt/nas/ but I don’t know how to make that mean anything to any program – its just an empty folder!
[quote comment="29636"]I want to back up from my /home/me/ directory to a NAS harddrive (called Ting) sat plugged into my wireless router.
How do I give that address to grsync, please? Nothing I try works!
I tried smb://ting/jon/
I tried 192.168.2.2/jon/
//ting/jon/
Both these work as addresses in Konqueror.
I even created a folder under mnt called nas……..mnt/nas/ but I don’t know how to make that mean anything to any program – its just an empty folder![/quote]
Ok, I assume that you are running KDE. rsync doesn’t know anything about KDEs kio-slaves, which means that smb:// will not work.
Instead, you will have to mount the network share in the file-system; in /mnt/nas for example, as you suggested. You will need to install smbfs by running “sudo apt-get install smbfs”, but without the quotes.
Then you should be able to mount the file-system by running something like this: “sudo mount -t smbfs -o username=XX,mode=755,uid=YY //192.168.2.2/jon/ /mnt/nas”
Replace XX with the username on the NAS, and YY with the uid you get when you run “id” on the command-line.
Good luck.
mine doesn’t look like that. im running the latest version in ubuntu 11.10 and there is no execute button. I can set everything up but then there is no way to start it.
Dave, in Ubuntu 11.10 check out the “gear” icon in towards the upper right of grsync