this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2025
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You might not even like rsync. Yeah it's old. Yeah it's slow. But if you're working with Linux you're going to need to know it.

In this video I walk through my favorite everyday flags for rsync.

Support the channel:
https://patreon.com/VeronicaExplains
https://ko-fi.com/VeronicaExplains
https://thestopbits.bandcamp.com/

Here's a companion blog post, where I cover a bit more detail: https://vkc.sh/everyday-rsync

Also, @BreadOnPenguins made an awesome rsync video and you should check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eifQI5uD6VQ

Lastly, I left out all of the ssh setup stuff because I made a video about that and the blog post goes into a smidge more detail. If you want to see a video covering the basics of using SSH, I made one a few years ago and it's still pretty good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FKsdbjzBcc

Chapters:
1:18 Invoking rsync
4:05 The --delete flag for rsync
5:30 Compression flag: -z
6:02 Using tmux and rsync together
6:30 but Veronica... why not use (insert shiny object here)

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[–] Mio@feddit.nu 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

I think the there are better alternatives for backup like kopia and restic. Even seafile. Want protection against ransomware, storage compression, encryption, versioning, sync upon write and block deduplication.

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[–] vga@sopuli.xyz 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

It's not bad if you don't need historical backups. I kinda think I do, so I use https://github.com/rustic-rs/rustic becase rust

Restic (https://github.com/restic/restic) is probably a better choice if you're not a rust-freak like me.

[–] harambe69@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 months ago

Rustic scares me. I will 100% forget what tool I used to backup after 5 years and be unable to recover my files.

[–] WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I use rsync + ZFS for backups which includes historical backups

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[–] portnull@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

Maybe I am missing something but how does it handle snapshots?

I use rsync all the time but only for moving data around effectively. But not for backups as it doesn't (AFAIK) hanld snapshots

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[–] Jessica@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If you're trying to back up Windows OS drives for some reason, robocopy works quite similarly to rsync.

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[–] Xylight@lemdro.id 3 points 2 months ago

rsync for backups? I guess it depends on what kind of backup

for redundant backups of my data and configs that I still have a live copy of, I use restic, it compresses extremely well

I have used rsync to permanently move something to another drive though

[–] tomkatt@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

Rsync is great. I’ve been using it to back up my book library from my local Calibre collection to my NAS for years, it’s absurdly simple and convenient. Plus, -ruv lets me ignore unchanged files and backup recursively, and if I clean up locally and need that replicated, just need to add —delete.

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 months ago

Grsync is great. Having a GUI can be helpful

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