rsync - Oct 2008 - push, pull confusion.

I've been using rsync to back-up user files on samba shares. The idea was 
to capture the file changes from day to day work, back all changes and new 
files to a server with limited access. If someone wanted to delete the 
files, there would be a back-up of their work.  

While checking logs the other day, I noticed that on the files on 
the "backup server" where only a partial list of what users had in the
samba shares. Running the rsync transfer by hand after making backups, I 
thought maybe I had a push-pull problem. Changing the command did transfer 
the newer files to the backup server. But I found that while cleaning out 
the group share that rsync is pushing old backup files into the samba 
shares from the backup.

 I would like to keep the old files on the backup server, but not transfer 
them back to the samba server. ie If a user deletes file "a.doc" from
the
samba share, it remains in the backup server but rsync doesn't put it back 
on the samba share.  

The backup server is running the rsync daemon.
The command I have been using from the samba share computer.
rsync -pavzW --stats user@192.168.1.2::back_up_daemon /samba_shares

Thanks


-- 
Mark Busby

On Mon, 2008-10-13 at 11:47 -0500, Mark Busby wrote:
> I've been using rsync to back-up user files on samba shares. The idea
was
> to capture the file changes from day to day work, back all changes and new 
> files to a server with limited access. If someone wanted to delete the 
> files, there would be a back-up of their work.  
> 
> While checking logs the other day, I noticed that on the files on 
> the "backup server" where only a partial list of what users had
in the
> samba shares. Running the rsync transfer by hand after making backups, I 
> thought maybe I had a push-pull problem. Changing the command did transfer 
> the newer files to the backup server. But I found that while cleaning out 
> the group share that rsync is pushing old backup files into the samba 
> shares from the backup.
> 
>  I would like to keep the old files on the backup server, but not transfer 
> them back to the samba server. ie If a user deletes file "a.doc"
from the
> samba share, it remains in the backup server but rsync doesn't put it
back
> on the samba share.  
It sounds like you want a one-way copy from the samba share to the
backup server without the --delete option.  Another option worth
considering is to use a --backup-dir to move deleted files (and
overwritten ones too) to a separate place on the backup server.
> The backup server is running the rsync daemon.
> The command I have been using from the samba share computer.
> rsync -pavzW --stats user@192.168.1.2::back_up_daemon /samba_shares
That command will copy from the backup server to the samba shares, which
I think is the reverse of what you want.  Try this instead:

rsync -pavzW --stats /samba_shares user@192.168.1.2::back_up_daemon

Matt