Rsync about

One of the problems with being alive in the 21st century is that you quickly accumulate vast quantities of personal data which need backing up. Some villains keep their inboxes clean by deleting mail once it's read, and are satisfied with only having family photos dating back to their last hard drive crash. I, however, prefer to obsess over making backups:

#!/bin/bash xterm -T "Photo Backup script" \ -e rsync \ -e 'ssh -i /local/path/to/ssh-rsync-key' \ --partial \ --delete \ --progress \ -avv \ /local/path/to/source/ remoteuser@remote.host.com:/remote/path/to/destination/

I have that in a file called "Photo Backup.sh" on my Ubuntu desktop. It is executable, and whenever I feel like jamming up the phone lines, I double click on it and it begins the mammoth task of synchronising my local photo directory with a remote one. Since I don't use rsync's bandwidth limiting option, I just close it down with a ctrl-c when I want to use other web apps. I wasn't joking about it jamming up the phone lines either, since I have a Vonage line. If a call arrives when this script is uploading, the voice quality is awful. Apparently I have a very dumb wireless router upstairs.

This page explains how to set up SSH on your local and remote machines to accept passwordless login. Read it, do it, personalise the script for your particular host and directories, and away you go!

With Virgin Media's 'L' package (4Mb/s download, 512Kb/s upload), and without leaving the computer on all night or silly things like that, it took about 10 weeks to upload about 30GB of pictures. Crazy long, sure, but it's worth it. I hope.