rsync -rihavz –files-from=to_backup –log-file rsync-log
–rsync-path=”rsync –log-file=/home/me/rsync-log” –delete-after
/home/me remote_machine:~

what this does:

-a is preserving permissions, and normally recursing (-r) when there
is no –from-file. As we read our backup directories from the to_backup file, we also need
-r recurse
-h human file sizes (13.4M instead of so and so many bytes)
-v verbose
-z compress
-i itemized list of stuff being transferred
–log-file specifies a log file name locally
–rsync-path path of remote rsync executable. We use this command in
order to tell the remote rsync to also log the transfers (in case
something fails in the client, the server knows which was the last
transfer).
–files-from specifies that the directories and concrete files to be
backed up are to be read from to_backup
–delete-after delete all files in server that have been
moved/deleted in client, but do so after the transfer.
remote_machine:~ dump the files on my home directory at the remote machine which is accessible via ssh with passphrase (if you don’t
know what this means, check this out:
http://sial.org/howto/openssh/publickey-auth/)

the to_backup file simply contains a list of
directories or single files to be recursively taken into account. If
you wish to have md4 hashing for identification of changed files
instead of timestamp and size or particular sets of excluded files,
check the rsync man page, which is quite readable.

Cheers,

Álv.

1 10 SystemBackup /usr/local/bin/backup-all

Does this mean the task is scheduled to take place daily, 10 minutes after the computer is first booted up?