How to backup your Mac to Dreamhost with rsync
All Dreamhost hosting accounts now come with 50gb of free personal backup.I’ve been searching for a while on a good tutorial for this and couldn’t find one, so I thought I would make my own.
1. Setup passwordless login for rsync (can be skipped if you don’t mind typing your password each time you want to sync)
- Open terminal and type the following (press return after each line)
- “ssh-keygen -t dsa” (press enter after all three prompts)
- “scp ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub remote”
- “cat ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys”
- “chmod 644 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys”
- “sftp backupusername@backup.dreamhost.com”
- “lcd /Users/OSXUsername/.ssh
- “mkdir .ssh”
- “put authorized_keys .ssh”
2. Sync your files / folders
- Open terminal and type the following, then press return
- “rsync -avz BackupFolder backupusername@backup.dreamhost.com:DestinationFolder” (example: “rsync -avz ~/Documents bxxxxxx@backup.dreamhost.com:macbook_backup”)
- Optionally, you can add “–delete” after “-avz” (ie: “-avz –delete “) if you want to delete files on your backup once they’ve been deleted locally
3. Automate the backup process
- Still working on this, check back later or leave some advice in the comments. Thanks!
Sources of information:
Michael Twomey – http://blogs.translucentcode.org/mick/archives/000230.html
Marc Climent – http://codelog.climens.net/2008/12/03/using-dreamhost-backup-account-with-rsync/
[gmap]
